


A Spin On The Web of Destiny

by Lil_Lola_Blue



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Female Protagonist, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Multi, POV Female Character, Polyandry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-16 04:36:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8087563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lil_Lola_Blue/pseuds/Lil_Lola_Blue
Summary: This, O Best Beloved, is a simple story about a blacksmith, his sister son the bowman, and the gladiatrix who counts them chief among her lovers. A rather ordinary tale about an unsentimental woman with a romantic boy on one hand and a hard man on the other. And a pet he-Elf she meets in Bree, every once in awhile, on the sly.  But it is also a story about the true nature of life and death, of love and lust,  freedom and slavery, friendship and brotherhood, A tale regarding the malleability of destiny, and the nature of second chances. Yes, it is the story of Thorin Oakenshield and the second chance his gods gave him, but it is also the story of a woman, Brimi, daughter of Dwalin. Who knows? It might even be more her story, in the end, than his. (WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS NO DURINCEST)





	1. Prelude: At the Circus Mortis, in Mordor Where the Shadows Lie

 

**A SPIN ON THE WEB OF DESTINY**

**Prelude: The Circus Mortis, in the Great Coliseum of Nurn, Mordor**

They say you have to be a bastard to survive as a gladiator.

I’ve been here for thirty years, and I’m Master Gladiator, what does that say about me?

I am Brimi, daughter of Dwalin, and daughter of Idunni of the Dokklafari, and as I was born on the wrong side of the blanket, I always had to be tough as dragon-hide leather and hard as mithril steel.

I was taken by the orc slavers when I was twenty, while defending Kili.

I loved him and I still do, but Kili is a very traditional sort of fellow who wasn’t going to lay a finger on me until we were 35 and we could be formally Promised.

Therefore, his Uncle had been laying more than his finger to me for the past four years.

People said Thorin’s blood was hot and his heart was cold, but not to me, and I never cared about his other women.

Do I love Thorin?

Love is a nice little word, isn't it?

Too nice and too little to describe my feelings for Thorin Oakenshield.

The orc slavers kept me in Moria for ten years to try and break me so they could sell me.

I don’t mean they tried for a few days, or a week, or a month or so.

Do you know what orcs do to the she-Elves they take? 

If they haven’t got enough women of their own kind to go around, orcs kidnap a she-Elf, and they make an orc out of her.

Orcs know they’re a gnarled shoot off of the silvery tree of the blood of the Eldar, they know some of the magic that the Dark Lord used to make Elves into orcs.

But most of what they know is slow, deliberate, unrelenting cruelty, viciousness and violence; they are brutal, and evil, from cradle to grave, from generation to generation, since the beginning of their twisted race.

It takes about five years for them to make a she-Elf into a she-Orc.

They take their time because they know they have all the time in the world to be orcs.

So, they took their time, to try and break me.

I survived because Bolg, son of Azog, fancied  me and I didn’t object.

At their last attempt, they whipped me with an orc’s knout until my back was in bloody ribbons,  but I didn’t break.

They gave up on softening me when they tried to starve me to death and came back to check on me in a week and found out I had roasted, killed and eaten most of my orc jailer.

“Tastes just like chicken.” I told one Bolg.

He laughed and insisted that I was considered an honorary orc.

Bolg eventually got an  idea, that they might get me all cleaned up and sell me  as a whore to some greedy fool, and as soon as he had me home, I could kill the stupid bastard, steal all his money, and bring it back.

Then they’d do it, again.

But why didn’t I run?

I tried that, the first time.

Bolg had his eye on me, and they would have killed if I hadn’t got him laughing at how I fucked and killed my purchaser, then robbed him, taking the rings off his fingers while his body was still warm.

Bolg saw to it that his fellow orcs were merciful with me, concerning my punishment.

Merciful, that is, for filthy feckin' orcs. I said I didn't object to being Bolg's concubine, but that doesn't mean i was so terribly feckin' fond of him!

They cut off one of me toes and sold me again, and again and again.

Eventually they sold me to Tom, a tinker.

He was no wicked master, he was kind, and there are times I wish that I was still with him.

I’d be married, now, living in a little stone cottage with roses around the door.

Tom was a good man, with a gentle soul, it’s no wonder this rotten world took him.

They blamed me for his death, in Dunland, shaved off my hair and beard and hung me in a gibbet for a fortnight, and sold me to the Easterling slavers.

I got so mad I killed every man on the ship on our way to the Great Slave Market on the Beran Sea.

I was hanging in the gibbet, again, when I came to the notice of Hrothgar the Black, a pirate who was half-man and Half-Elf.

Hrothgar, the child of gladiators, bought me, and we had a fine time pirating until they caught us.

All the rest of the crew hung, but Hrothgar was of the Brotherhood of Gladiators, so they sent him back to the Circus, and me with him.

In a year, Hrothgar had money for another crew, but I had become the protégé of Alfsjkald the Great, Master Gladiator of the Circus Mortis for fifty years.

He was a hell of a man, and he was a Dwarf, every inch of him.

When he died, I became Master Gladiatrix and I have been for twenty years.

This is my home, now.

Sometimes I think of  the Ered Luin.

But in forty years as a slave, you learn to stop having those kind of hopes; they can kill you.

When you have been a slave for six months or a year, home is all you can think of.

But when you have been a slave for forty years, home becomes a rosy memory.

Like you have died, and become a ghost and no matter how much you want to return, you know that you never can, or will.

I have found a fine life and a good home.

As Master I have my own room, off the barracks, and some things of me own.

I never miss a raiding party to go and round up more orcs; but mostly we take them as prisoners of war, or buy them.

The Ringmaster looks after us, and we look after each other.

Around the coliseum and the barracks, there’s a village, made up of former gladiators, & their families, and we have the finest tradesmen in Arda.

Dwarrow blacksmiths, Elvin healers, artisans from Gondor, stonemasons from Rohan.

We slaves with no home and no family have made a place and a purpose for ourselves, in the dark heart of Mordor where the shadows lie.

In ten years, I’ll be free; I might go back to the Ered Luin, or to see what became of that Wood Elf I had as a pet, or I might retire to the village.

Hell, I've been a slave and a gladiator so long, i wouldn't know how to be a free woman, anyway. And even if I could figure it out, after what I've been, and done and had to do, how could I go back to New Belegost? What would I do? What would I say to Adad, and to Uncle Balin, and by the shorter and curlier of Mahal's beards, what would i say to Kili?

I wouldn't have to worry about what to say to Thorin. I'd just tell him the truth and he'd understand. He's a real hard man, Thorin Oakenshield, and he comes by his hardness, honestly, because it's been a long time down the hard road of his life and a hard time down the long road of his life, both. 

Why bother thinking on it, after all this time, I’ll bet either think me dead, or they don’t even remember me.

I’ll bet Thorin didn’t even know it was me that he saw today, and I wonder what he’s doing, in Mordor, but everyone seems to come to the Circus, eventually.

It’s better I leave it alone.

Still, I wonder.

Does Thorin remember me, would he even know me, after forty years?

And Da, and Uncle Balin, and Kili. do they remember me and would they know me?

What about home, and freedom?

What then?


	2. Prelude Continued: The Return of the King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Brimi puts on quite a spectacle for her (very) old flame, and discovers that forty years on, he has not gotten so old after all. Also in which Thorin tells the Master Gladiatrix just what's on his mind, and finally, in which Brimi must decide to do about it.

 

**Prelude Continued: The Return of the King**

The day began as any day would.

I awoke, early, bathed in the basin I had left out the night before, put on my square-necked tunic and belt, and my boots, and went out to the barracks, to greet each of the eighty souls in the Brotherhood of Gladiators.

We all ate together, in the barracks, and then I held a meeting as to our strategy in the usual Saturday double games, along with Ragnar of Rogan, who would be my successor.

Then, I  dressed for battle.

At the early games, which we only have on Saturdays, I lost no souls to violence, not even a finger or a limb, and I killed 25 orcs.

After, I  had to put ten men with minor wounds out of the evening games, and I went with Ragnar, to the village, to have our weapons sharpened.

Right before the evening games, Hranmi, the Master Trainer, who is also a dwarf, came and told me that Thorin Oakenshield was in the Coliseum, that he had come to see the evening show.

The news hit me like a spear in the guts, tipped with Morgul poison.  

I was so deeply stricken, down to the very moorings of my  identity that when I heard that Thorin Oakenshield would be in the Coliseum, that night, attending the spectacle, the Saturday night show, the biggest of the week, too, the only thing I could think of was that he, like quite a few powerful men before him, had come to buy a night with me.

For old times sake

Home.

The years fell away, and the armor I  had built was pierced, and I was 16, again, lying in Thorin’s beefy arms, against his burly, hairy barrel chest, and he was telling me that he knew he had no right, as a man, to lie with me, so he had decided, as a king, he would take it.

I never forgot that.

How many times, in the Arena, with blood in me hair and dust in me mouth had I shouted to my gladiators that as a woman and a slave, these many years I had no right to live, but as Master Gladiator, I would take it, and that now that they were gladiators too, it was for them to take the right to live?

I thought of Thorin, almost every time i said it.

I always thought of Thorin when I fought, not as a man, but as a warlord, a great, brutal, and pitiless warlord, who caved in the heads of orcs with a hammer, and sliced through their limbs with an axe, who spilled their vitals and their guts with the slash and thrust of his sword.

With my father at his side.

Of Thorin Oakenshield, who took the arm of Azog the Defiler

And now, he was here?

Thorin?

All gladiators, not just the Master are permitted to turn down any offers they didn’t want to take, I had accepted some and turned down others.

I had been accepting them more often in the past year or so, since I had lost my he-Elf.

As fate would have it, the same he-Elf I had let go, many years before

This time he had marched off to war, hoping for a glorious death, and he did slay many orcs on his campaign with the riders of Rohan, but he took a Morgul arrow through the eye and wound up in the hands of orc-slavers.

They were going to kill him, since he was half-dead, anyway, but they still charged me a pretty penny for him, and I paid it, and he paid me back well, over the next five years or so.

But his father came to reclaim him, and those are the rules of the Circus, so I had to let him go.

At least he’s free.

He never had to be a slave, not the way I did, at least.

But I’ve only ever been sentmental about one man.

Kili.

There was always Ragnar, and when a likely fellow came along, and i could make a little momney and have a little fun?

Why not?

Life is for the living and you’re dead a long time.

But I never expected Thorin to be one of them.

Even when I was a girl in the Ered Luin I’d carried a torch for Thorin.

Hell, when I was old enough,  he had lit the torch, and it had been burning, ever since.

“Right between my legs.” I said, under my breath, when Hranmi told me. 

Well, what else could I do?

I had to show Thorin I was worthy of my father’s name, and that they had not made me Master Gladiatrix for nothing.

* * *

 

I wore the briefest armor I could, without being naked, and nothing under it, and that night I tore into the army of orcs the Ringmasterhad pitched against us with the same savage joy that Fenrir, himself,  will tear into the flesh of the gods, themselves, during the Ragnarok.

Those feckin’ orcs, they had their own Ragnarok at my hands, that night.

And the Brotherhood picked up on my frenzy; it was a fine a terrible slaughter, especially for those damned orcs.

They had been decently bought, decently fed, decently housed and decently armed and they all had a chance to fight before we decently slaughtered them.

But that wasn’t all.

At the evening games on Saturdays, after the usual sport was concluded, there was my showcase.

A special treat for this crowd; they brought out a wingless firewurm.

The beast was old, and missing many of it’s teeth; the orcs would never sell us any beasts of real worth, but it had plenty of fight in it.

I had a shield and boots and a belt made from the skin of a previous opponent, and the leather in my armor is also made of it’s black and purple skin.

I defeated the creature so quickly that the crowd booed, so I was obliged to slay a pack of wargs with only the help of Tyr, my warghound, and knuckle dusters.

A cheap trick, but one that always pleased the crowd.

Then Grod, an orc who works for me, brought out the chains they lead me into and out of the arena in, fresh ones to replace the ones I broke at the start.

They always bring me out for my showcase in chains, and I  always break them.

You have to be strong to be an orc, I can break any chain save one made from solid mithril.

Bound in chains I hacked off the head of the firewurm and crawled to the top of the mound of dead dragon and dead wargs, covered in dust and blood from head to foot, and I held the dragon’s head high.

The crowd were all on their feet, stomping, cheering, throwing money at me so coins from brass ha’pennies to golden crowns fell on me in a shower.

Grod would gather them up for me.

And he knew better than to take more than every tenth coin of each kind, for himself.

“I wish to give the blood, the teeth and claws, the scales and hide, and head of the firewurm to Thorin Oakenshield, son of Thrain, son of Thror!” I cried.

With my other hand, I lifted up the chain around my neck, and by this I mean the mithril necklace.

“For this is his ring, on a chain he made with his own hands, around my neck, and he is my King.”

A grand gesture, foolish, partly, to say, I’m alright here, Thorin, I don’t need you.

And partly because I meant every feckin’ word.

I thought it was a final gesture.

But it would not end there.

* * *

 

***

Brimi took a long time, coming to the door, when the Ringmaster knocked.

“Yes, Ringmaster?”

“Brimi, your King demands an audience with you. That is what he said. He said that you are god-damned right that he is your King, and that ring around your neck, on that mithril chain is god-damned well binds you to his service and he demands to see you, by both Mahal’s beards.

The Ringmaster was trying not to smile.

“Well, in that case, I had better go." Brimi told him.

* * *

 

***

Even though it was very late, and Thorin was barefoot, in just his tunic and his breeches when the Ringmaster brought Brimi to him, Thorin was very formal while the Ringmaster was there, very kingly and majestic, but as soon as the Ringmaster left the guest suite, and locked the door?

Thorin was across the room in two bounds and he had his arms around Brimi, and he was swinging her round, laughing like a drunken blacksmith, and he held her, tightly against his chest.

“Brimi, our Brimi, your father was right! Kili was right. They never gave up on you. But I thought you dead, my girl. Dead as Thror my grandfather, as Anorloth my wife, as Thrain, my son. Dead and lost to me forever.”

He put her down, but she held him so tightly that he could scarcely draw breath.

At last, he held her at arm’s length.

“Are you trying to crush me? I’m not some leathery orc, You can’t pull me apart so easily!” he laughed.

“I wouldn’t dare to try. By Thor’s brass bollocks,  it’s been forty years, Thorin, and time hasn’t just been kind to you, it’s been generous. You’ve a touch more silver in your hair, otherwise, you look the same. Just as I remember you.”

“I’m still an old man, Brimi. But here you are, my girl, and you have changed, you’re a grown woman, now! In the prime of your life, beautiful and terrible! Master Gladiatrix! A leader of Men, Elves and Dwarves, and a despoiler, no, a scourge of Orcs! I wish I could have been in that Arena with you, my girl, fighting that horde! And you must do this every night? All of you, you and those eighty souls, there is not a day for you that you don’t face war, and ruin, and death?”

“I’ve known worse than this, Thorin. Far worse.”

“I feared that. But I heard hat you had come to a far worse fate.  You don’t know, Brimi,  many nights,when I was deep in drunkenness and despair I shook my fist and cursed Mahal, that he had taken a mean, bitter, greedy old whoremaster and warlord’s last chance for love. Or something like it. But here you are, Mahal who made me, and Father Odin who made him be praised!”

Tears sprang to Brimi’s eyes and she wiped them away with her fists, furiously.

“That’s’ right. Here I am. And here you are. I suppose we have this night, Thorin, and we ought to make the best of it.”

“This night? This night? Why only this night?”

Brimi looked at him, dumbly.

And Thorin felt his heart lurch in his chest.

It was too much for her to even imagine.

“You can’t even dream of freedom, can you Brimi? Or of home? I know what that feels like, my girl. To have to turn your back on thoughts of home, of all the desires of your heart, only to survive. We’ve got as many nights as I have years left in my hot Dokkalfari blood, bless my grandfather for marrying a Dokkalfari warrior woman. I’ve come to give you your freedom, and take you home. To the Blue Mountains.”

“Home? With you? To Da, and Uncle Balin, and Kili, and…everybody? But I can’t go, Thorin. It’s been forty years!”

“Would you rather I came back in another ten years and let you have some more time to think on it? I know it must be terrifying to you, almost more bad than good. But you can do it, Brimi, my girl. And you know, you’ll have me to help you. You’ll be my Shield-Woman, my Personal Guard.. It would be an honor to me, for you to take that position, at my side.”

“Your Shield-Woman? Like Queen Skadi was, before King Thror married her? No, Thorin, that would be too high an honor for me. And home? I can’t sit at your table. Or sleep in your bed. Not after I’ve lain with an orc! I’ve done what Ihad to do, to live but I’ve brought  shame to my father’s name, and Uncle Balin’s. And as for Kili? I’m not fit to darn his socks! Thorin, I have been a liar, and a murderer and a thief. I’ve ate with orcs and drank with them, ate orc’s flesh, and the flesh of the gods only know what other creatures, in their halls. They took my ear, and my toe, and you can see the scars on my back! They sold me over and over and over again, to men even more wicked than the orcs, and I killed those men, and brought the money back to my slavers, and the joke was on then, because they bought me to use me for their pleasure, but before they died, I used them! I was a pirate, Thorin, and I’ve been a savage warlord for thirty years! Some of those men of mine were boys when they came here, and I was obliged to make men of them before I taught them to fight. Do you think I could watch them go to their deaths, being boys? Do you know how many of them have died in my arms, in the blood and the dirt, in the Arena? Do you think I can go home, with you, to a place of honor after that?”

Thorin just laughed, and shook his head

“If I was my grandfather? No. If I was my father? Never. But I’ve not been some pampered prince, who’s sent his whole life with his arse resting on a silken pillow, with a she-dwarf to braid his hair and a she-Elf to suck his cock.”

That made Brimi laugh, a little.

“That is quite a horror story, Brimi, but I know it well. I lived through the fall of Erebor, and i went from being that princeling to being a homeless blacksmith with a wife and a son and not so much as a pot to piss on or the window to throw it out of in the shake of Smaug’s tail. I worked like a slave at the side of the men of Dale, to build Laketown! And I worked hard for forty years after. Forgive me if I don’t speak of Azanulbizar and the death of my grandfather my brother and my son, and eventually the death of my wife and my father’s madness. And I won’t stand here and tell you what I did to rebuild the Ered Luin. All I didn’t do was bend over for a randy he-Elf, Great Thor, girl, if I told you about some of the things I was obliged to do for and with those wealthy she-Elves who put up much of the capital behind New Belegost? I can’t say I didn’t enjoy most of it, but well, no amount of pretty pretty words they’ll say at my funeral will erase the fact that I was a pretty, pretty young gigolo for that lot, to make a home for my people. I’ve killed, Brimi, and I’ve stolen, and lied, and cheated and whored myself, for the same reasons you have. Because I had to. Because I am strong enough to do it, where others are weak. And I can’t even fall back on, well, I was a slave, I had to do it. So, I’d say, you’re the right woman for the job, for a King Under the Mountain the likes of me. Besides, I’ve already bought and paid for you, haven’t I?”

That last part was meant to be a joke, but Brimi seized on it.

“Then you’ve bought me, Master Thorin?”

“I’ve bought your freedom girl, I’m not your-“

Thorin stopped himself short.

It was what she understood; he had years, they all had years, to teach her otherwise.

“Think of it how you like, Brimi. But you’re coming with me.”

Brimi thought on it.

_It’s not so bad. Thorin’s my master now, I know he’ll not be a wicked master. I know him well. He’s always been my master, in a way, I’ve never taken off his ring. And he wants to take me back home._

Brimi suddenly realized just how much she still wanted to go home.

And forty years was not so long, for a Dwarf, especially a Dwarf with Dark Elf blood.

“I can say no, if I want to. I have, you know. I don’t have to go to every man who says he wants me. And usually, they have to put out a lot of money for me. A lot.”

“I’ve given that Ringmaster your legacy to me from the arena. You are worth every silver penny, my girl.”

“I’ll want to come back here. And before I go, I must talk to my brothers and sisters. And not just  to visit. I’ll always be Master Gladiator, even though Ragnar of Rohan will replace me, now.  Until I die, I will be Master Gladiator, and every man and woman in the Brotherhood of Gladiators, if I call on them? They will come. But I have to come back here, to reinforce that. Train new recruits. Go into the Arena. You’ll need me and mine, if you ever do want to march on Erebor.”

“That sounds like a plan you’ve long had. Master Gladiatrix. And you’re free to come to the Circus, you’re free to stay here in the summer, or the winter, or for only a week or two, if that’s what you want. You’re free to arrange to meet with any of your pet-he-elves as long as you do it outside the Ered Luin. You’re a free woman, Brimi.”

“And you’re a free man, is that it, Master Thorin? Well, i know a good offer and a good master, when I hear and and see them. My father didn’t raise any fools. I’ll get cracking. I will have Grod get my things together.”

 

* * *

                                                                    

Thorin was glad that Kili hadn’t come to the Circus, that he hadn’t seen the goodbye between Brimi and tall, good-looking, bearish Ragnar of Rohan, because it was plain as the nose on your face that Ragnar was losing a mistress as well as a master.

But Thorin wasn’t Kili; he knew Brimi when she was sixteen for the sort of tough, smart, lusty, refreshingly and wonderfully unsentimental girl she was, and as a woman, she was all those things, but also hard and shrewd and not afraid to use every advantage at her disposal not just to survive, but to thrive.

Brimi came with Tyr, her bonded warghound, Thurusaz, her war ram and tied to her back with ropes, a heavy trunk.

Thorin wouldn’t have that; he bought a cart in the village of the Brotherhood, and hitched his pack pony to it.

They would sail from the sea of Nurnen to the Bay of Beran, and then down the Anduin, to Gondor, where Thorin had left Fili and Kili with Dwalin.

He knew there was no real urgency, but the time on the ship, alone with Brimi, it seemed precious to Thorin.

Their first night on the open sea, he made love to her for the first time in forty years, three times over in his ardor, although, he thought, even at his age, he was good for twice in one day, every morning and every night, regular as clockwork.

That would have to be enough for her, and if it wasn’t?

Kili was of an age where it was embarrassing to Thorin that he was a raw virgin; he could be Promised to his Brimi now, maybe that would inspire him to be a man.

And of she did have a pet he-Elf or three tucked away, well, what of it?

The day Thorin Oakenshield felt his manhood threatened by a feckin' Elf, well that wouldn't even be the day he died, a fat old man. 

But though Brimi slept in his arms, Thorin stayed awake, holding her.

Thinking about the responsibility he was taking on.

Thinking about the talk he was going to have to have with Kili.

And with Fili.

Thinking that now that he had Brimi back, again, he was never going to allow himself to be parted from her for more than a fortnight, not until death tore them apart, and when it did, he would wait on the shores of Valhalla, every night when the horns sounded, waiting for her to return to him.

Forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time there will be a brief mention of Brimi's homecoming and then, O Best Beloved, we shall get into the meat of the tale, 20 years on, after the events of the Quest for Erebor in which Thorin gets his second chance at said quest, and has to decide on some matters that should have come first, in the first place.


	3. Journeys End in Lovers Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Brimi is reunited with her family, and we learn some things about Fili that will be more important later, and poor Kili finally gets what's coming to him.

 

**Chapter Three: Journeys End In Lovers Meeting**

Brimi was quiet, as they rode towards Osgiliath.

The closer that she and Thorin came to their destination, The Orc’s Head, in Osgiliath, the quieter she became.

Which was unusual for Brimi.

She twisted and untwisted the mithril chain around her neck, fidgeting with Thorin’s ring.

“If you keep that up, you’ll twist all the links in that chain. I see you’ve made a habit of it., over the years. I’ll have to fix it, when we get back to the Ered Luin.” Thorin told her.

Brimi nodded.

“Are we going to The Orc’s Head?” she asked, a tense quarter of an hour later.

“Yes. You’ve been there?”

“Many times. We muster in Osgiliath, when the Ringmaster lends us out to Lord Ecthelion, to fight the orcs.”

Then she turned and gave him a searching look.

 “Does anybody remember me, besides you, Master Thorin.”

Thorin wanted to correct her, but when he told her that she was a free woman and he wasn’t her master, it unsettled her.

“We all remember you, Brimi. Everyone you knew in the Ered Luin still remembers you. Your father and your Uncle never stopped looking for you. Hardly a day goes by that either one of them, or Kili, don’t mention you.”

“Who is Kili Promised to?”

“No one. He’s your grass widower. He has been for forty years.”

“He is? But why? I would never have asked him…he didn’t have to do that, for the likes of me. He shouldn’t have.”

“Kili loves you. The way his poor mad father loves my sister. And his brother. Lothin may be a bit of a romantic fool, but he is a good man. Sometimes I wish he had been Kili’s father and Fili’s, too, and that Fili wasn’t Wolf’s son, at all. But it might be better for you if it had been Fili you chose, and not his brother.”

“Fili’s a good-looking lad, and a fine son of an orc. But he’s too much like me.”

Brimi was quiet again.

“I would not consider you a coward, or less of a warrior, if you were scared, Brimi. Only a madwoman would not be frightened, if they were you. Be patient with yourself. In time, it will feel like home again.”

“But he’s got a woman, of some kind, right? I mean, Kili has.”

“You mean my sister son Kili, the lovesick warrior poet? Waiting in faint hope for the return of his doomed lady-love? You know how stupid some women are. They’re all mad for him. Because it’s such a feckin’ tragedy. And Kili, he has these courtly romances with them. A little dancing. A poem or two from him and they’ll give him a lock of their hair. Or one of their handkerchiefs. But he can never love them. Not really. They eat it up, all that courtly love bollocks, but when they realise that all they’re going to get out of Kili is a little kiss, his hand to hold, and some poetry that’s’ wasted on the likes of them? They move on, to greener pastures. The boy will be sixty this year and he’s a raw feckin’ virgin. I don’t know what to do with him.”

Brimi smiled.

“I do. I l know just what to do with a laddie like that. Its’ not any easy business, Thorin, showing a boy how he’s to become a man. But it’s my business. I’ll teach him to fight, too. Like we do. In the Arena. Don’t worry, Thorin. If it’s me Kili’s been waiting for, he’s been waiting on the right woman.”

She seemed relieved, after they spoke a little of Kili, but as they entered Osgiliath, Brimi clammed up again.

 She turned a whiter shade of pale when they arrived at The Orc’s Head, but if there was one thing Brimi knew, it was how to face fear, steady and head on.

“It’s lunchtime. I’ll bet they’ll all be in there, eating. Do you want to go in, and say something, first, or should I just walk in with you?”

“There’s nothing to say. I told your father, and your uncle that I had word that you were alive and well, a gladiator in the Circus Mortis.”

“From who? Who told you?”

“It wasn’t Fili. He kept whatever damn fool promise you got from him. It was my brother-by-law. Wolf. I didn’t give Fili permission to sell himself into the Arena. And he didn’t do it to learn how to fight. No matter what he told you. He needed the money; he owed me three years back pay for my having to cover his debts in Forlond Harbor. When he didn’t come home after a fortnight, I started looking for him, in the West. I didn’t want to get Wolf and Lothin involved, but Fili’s old enough now to choose for himself if he wants to know his father.They started looking for him in the East. When Wolf went to the Circus, looking for Fili, he and Lothin saw you, and they sent word to me, immediately, with Fili, in a sealed letter.”

Brimi chuckled.

“Well, it’s good for Fili that he didn’t talk. And he tried to tell me all that bollocks, making it seem like he had some high purpose in coming to the arena.  I told him it was a load of bollocks, he and I were the best fighters of our generation, hands down! Wolf sent him home with a king’s ransom, I’ll bet! Nearly every Saturday, some rich woman, usually some obscenely wealthy she-Elf was ready with a King’s Ransom for one night with Fili, the Wolf of the West, son of Vargbrand the Beast, the Great Wolf, sister son of Thorin son of Thrain, son of Thror! Some weekends he had two on Saturday. Never on Sunday, that was our day off. I know he’s your sister son, Thorin, but after I had that he-Elf to put up with, for years? Not that he wasn’t a  fine man, but you know how Elves are. I was damned glad to see Fili again, as much as because he was a Dwarf as he was Fili!”

“If it brought you home, then it was for the best that Fili did such a damn fool thing. You taught him the value of keeping his word, my girl. I knew if you were Master Gladiatrix, and he was one of the Brotherhood that he’d never spend a night in the barracks. But Fili did no bragging to his brother; he’s kept quiet about it.”

“I made him promise that he would. There are some things that Kili never has to know. Well, damn my eyes, Thorin, I think I’m ready. Mind you, I’d sooner face every orc in Moria, naked, armed with a knitting needle.”

“I’ll be right beside you, Brimi, my girl. After you step through the door? You’ll be alright. That will be the hardest part.”

* * *

 

                                                            ***

Thorin told me that walking into The Orc’s Head would be the hardest thing I had to do, and he was right.

He practically had to shove me through the door.

I died a thousand times, standing in the doorway.

They were sitting at the table, right by the door, and Adad was facing the door; he was the first to see me.

He had lost his Mohawk, on top, but other than that, Adad was unchanged.

Uncle Balin looked a little older and a little whiter in his hair and beard.

And Kili had grown quite tall, he was almost as tall as Thorin, but he wasn’t willowy, anymore, he was burly and hairy, like Thorin, but he still had a little peach fuzz beard.

But his face wasn’t changed, he was still a swarthy black-eyed beauty, prettier than most women were.

Adad stood up, and waved his hand impatiently, to stop Fili from talking.

Kili turned around when he saw the look on Da’s face.

And when he saw me, he smiled that slow, sweet, guiless Kili smile, and I promised myself, that Kili, he was the first laddie and he’d be the last, and he’d never die in my arms., like so many of the others had.

I’d never lose Kili to the Arena, or have him taken away from me; and I began to see    what Thorin meant, about being a free woman.

“Brimi!” Kili shouted, and he jumped out of his chair and knocked it over, tripped on it as he tried to get away from it.

Then he was across the tavern in two or three leaps and hugging me, crushing me against his half-unlaced travel-stained tunic, so that my nose was stuck in the mat of curly black hair on his chest, and I felt like I might sneeze, if I wasn’t breathing in the smell of him, a scent I had known all my life.

Then, of course, they were all hugging me, Fili and Uncle Balin, but I backed away from my Da.

You know, I almost cried.

“Oh, Da, you shouldn’t! You shouldn’t, Da, and I know you’ve heard about the fine things I’ve done, but I’ve been terrible places and done horrible things, and had worse done to me. I did what I had to do, Da, but you have to know before you welcome me back to the family, with open arms, that I’ve brought shame on our name, as well as glory.” I told him.

Da’s eyes got all misty.

He went and hugged me, anyway.

“Brimi, I don’t care if you’ve lain with orcs and killed men, or killed orcs and lain with men; you survived, for forty years, and come home to me, at last! And if it’s shameful that a man’s daughter, not his son, mind you, his daughter, a girl of sixty, has been a great leader of men, a great warrior,  Master Gladiatrix of the Circus Mortis for twenty years? Then bring on the shame! I’m proud of you,. Brimi. No man of any race has ever had a son who made his father prouder than you have made me.”

I’m glad Da had a few things to say, not just because what he said did my heart good, but because I went and feckin’ cried, a little, and by the time he let me go, he was done crying and so was I.

We all sat down at the table, and they passed the plates to me.

No one was saying much, so it’s a good thing Uncle Balin was there.

He always knows what to say.

“So, Brimi, my girl, what trade did you take up?”

Making war is not a trade.

Neither is being Master Gladiator.

Blacksmith, tinker, hunter, cordwainer, these are trades.

Don’t laugh at mine.

“Well, I’m a good tinker and a bit of a smith. And I’m one hell of a hunter, but I don’t know anything about making pelts or tanning hides. You can help me with that, Kili, my lad. But goats are me trade. I raise goats and I train the best of them to be war rams. It wasn’t easy, Uncle Balin, getting my herd all the way here, and I’m sure we’ll have a fine time getting them to the Ered Luin. But they’re mountain goats, they’ll like it, there. And I have Tyr to help me.”

“That’s a fine trade! Very practical. And profitable.”

“Well, I’m like most Dwarves, I like money…”

When I said that, Thorin’s face turned bright red and Fili laughed.

“…that’s’ one of the main things master Thorin and I have in common. I can’t talk about the rest at table.” I finished.

Fili laughed even harder.

“Brimi, I’m your father! I don’t want to hear shite like that about my daughter and my shield-brother!”

“Why, Da? You’re good at killin’ orcs, too.” I replied, innocently.

Adad laughed so hard he almost spit ale out his nose, and even Thorin laughed.

“Brimi can make anybody laugh. At any time. No matter hwo thinsg have turned to shite. Brimi can always see the funny side of it.”

I gestured at Kili with my mug, slopping ale onto the table.

“That’s’ one of the chief reasons I’m still alive. And sane. In this miserable, feckin’ arena spectacle we call life, shoved into it alone and arse naked and dumped out of it the same way? You can either laugh, or cry. I picked laugh, a long time ago. Am I right, my brother?”

“As usual, my Chieftain.” Fili agreed.

Meanwhile, Uncle Balin steered the conversation back to my trade.

“So, your mother’s warghound found you, did he? I told your father he would. I suppose you left him with the goats. How does he like it, being a herding dog, too?”

“He wasn’t too fond of it, at first, Uncle Balin. But he got used to it. Tyr and I had to get used to a great many piss poor things.”

* * *

 

***

Thorin was right; I feel back into step with my family and the members of Thorin’s household like I had never left.

That was stranger to me than if they had seemed like well, strangers to me and I the same to them.

Since neither Da nor Uncle Balin are married we were all in Thorin’s household.

Everything was alright with me, until it was time for bed, and they had all pitched in for me to have a room of me own, at the inn.

I know everybody did it for my benefit, but that room at the inn was bigger than any room I’d been in for forty years.

My room, in Thorin’s’ household was going to seem like a feckin’ cavern to me, I suddenly thought.

And it was so feckin quiet!

I couldn’t sleep, alone in that big, unfamiliar quiet room; I couldn’t get my bearings at all; it was like my very soul was off its moorings.

If it had been Bolg at the door, knocking, I would have answered it, that’s how strange I felt.

“Brimi? It’s Kili? Are you awake?”

 _Your laddie, Master. Think on your laddie_ , I told meself.

I went to the door and unlocked it.

I don’t wear a nightshirt; usually I don’t wear any clothes to bed but as I was in an unfamiliar place I slept in my underthings.

Kili’s eyes grew wide as dinner plates when he saw me in me short stays and short drawers, with purple velvet ribbons as drawstrings just below me waist and around each thigh.

“Let me guess, Kili, my fine laddie. You’ve been waiting a goddamned long time and you don’t want to wait, anymore?”

Kili nodded.

“But we must be Promised, first. I bought this bead, and this blue cord, when I was thirty and five. I have considered myself Promised to you, ever since. Will you have me, Brimi, even though you’ve probably met far better men than  I am.”

“Oh, I’ve never met any better men than you, Kili, my laddie. Will you be my laddie, swear yourself to me, as one of the Brotherhood of Gladiators? Do you know what that means? Both?”

Kili nodded.

“Fili explained it to me. I know it’s a hell of an oath, to be the Master’s…lover. But it won’t be heavy on my soul. I’ve been yours, body and soul, all these years, Brimi. I will never betray you. I’ve been unknown to woman. And I’ll go to my grave, unknown to any woman but you.”

“You don’t have to Promise that last part, Kili.”

“I want to.”

“Well, I can’t hold you to that, after all, you don’t even know what you’re talking about, yet, do you. But will hold you to the rest.  And I want to swear a hell of an oath to you, too, Kili.  I promise you that I won’t let anyone take you from me. Or take me from you, again. I won’t see you die in battle, either. I’ll teach you how to live like a Gladiator, and fight like a Gladiator. And you’ll be my laddie, as you have always been. And we’ll never be parted from each other.”

“Never. Do we have to swear, in blood?”

“Oh, I can think of a much nicer way for us to make our Promises binding.”

Having made our promises, I put a braid in Kili’s hair, with a dragon leather thing entwined in it, and closed at the end by a bead made of moonstone.

And Kili put his promise braid in my hair, with the cord made of green silk and a bead made of mithril and turquoise.

“Let’s get one thing straight, Brimi. I love you. I’m not going to be satisfied with being your dear friend, or your gladiatrix’s laddie! I mean to be your lover, a proper lover, and if you won’t have me that way, then you won’t have me at all!” he insisted.

And just for good measure, Kili hauled me close to his body and kissed me.

He had some practice at that much, I could tell.

 “I do love you, Brimi!  I want you to know what it’s like to be made love to by a man who loves you. Hopelessly, madly and desperately. I’ve never touched another woman, and I never will. I burn for you Brimi!  The way saints and mystics burn for their gods. I don’t even see other women. I only see you. I only want you.”

Kili kissed me again, and as he did, he unlaced me  short stays at the front and they fell open.   

Well, he had me on the bed, then, and he took off his tunic and breeches and got in the bed with me, in just his loincloth.

My Kili, he’d grown up to be quite a man, alright!

He was almost as burly and hairy and formidable as his Uncle.

Poor Kili, he moaned like a man dying of thirst in the desert who comes upon an oasis and  I found meself  thinking that even if there wasn’t a lot of what you call technique in the way he had his hands on me tits, or his lips around me nipple, he made up for lack of technique with an excess of ardor.

Well, you can bet I started moaning, too.

“Please, Brimi, please, even if you don’t love me, let me love you! If you don’t, my heart will burst and I’ll just pine away and die!” Kili gasped.

“By all that’s holy in Asgard and the Undying Lands, Kili, you can love me to distraction!  Just don’t stop, again!” I told him.

“What if I do something wrong? What if I don’t know what to do next?”

“You’re doing fine, laddie. When you’re not, I’ll let you know.”

He was an adventurous laddie, love-struck Kili, because he didn’t stop at me tits and move on to getting bang on top of me, the way most raw virgins like him would have.  

He kept right on going.

He kissed me navel, put his tongue in it, something I’d not had done to me by many men at all.

I was surprised at the way it gave me a jolt of pleasure.

“You’ve been reading up on this, haven’t you, Kili?” I asked him.

He winked at me and grinned, impishly.

“I had to do something for forty years, didn’t I?”

Kili’s hands were visibly shaking, as he undid the purple velvet ribbons on me  drawers, pulling the laces slowly, savoring the moment he had dreamed of for so long.

Then he slid them out from under her and looking up at me, didn’t he give me this  wicked, mischievous little look and ran his tongue from her belly button all the way down to the other button.

He had some idea where that was, too, and if he wasn't as expert as he might have been,  what of it, if Kili had to nose around a little, looking for it, that didn’t do me any harm, either.

I was surprised he did it, too, he nearly made me jump out of me skin and I shouted his name so loudly I think they must have heard me in Minas Tirith, at the top f the White Tower, itself.

“Oh Brimi, my little love, your taste is as sweet as a ginger peach…”

 And I was getting dirty words of love, too, out of a raw virgin?

 “There, Kili. Right there...”

“Like this?”

“Just like that…no that’s the wrong hole, laddie, that’ll be the advanced class. Put your hand here…” I told him.

“Oooh, Brimi! If you hold my cock with your lovely velveteen glove the way you’re holding my hand, I’ll die from pleasure! Come mee closer to me, my queen, I want to wear you like a crown.”

Kili beckoned to me with his fingers still inside me, and the feeling it gave me poleaxed me to the spot.

Then, he got at talking to the button, again.

He was a natural, I thought, he really was, I didn’t have to work too hard to show him what to do and how to do it.

“By Loki, himself , Kili, don’t you dare stop, or I’ll be the one to die!” I yowled.  
           

Gandalf's fireworks don’t go off like I did, right about them, and  Kili took that as his cue to get bang on top of me.

He started to unwind his loincloth.

When he did, well I gasped.

I did, too.

“Thor’s mighty hammer!” she exclaimed.

Of all the men I’d ever lain with, the two Heirs of Durin I’d had were the most well-endowed.

And Kili?

He gets the grand prize!

Kili blushed red to the roots of his hair.

“Am I too big for you. my little love?”

I almost didn’t realize he said anything, as I reached for Kili’s mighty hammer with something like awe, running me hand up and down his unexpectedly considerable length and girth.

He had about an inch on his brother, and his uncle, in length and girth, and that, I can tell you is really feckin’ something.

It moved me to poetry, or as much like poetry as I can manage.

“And you worry that since you haven’t got a beard, you’re not a man? You’re so big, Kili! I can’t hardly get my hand around your mighty feckin warhammer! By Mahal’s forge, your cock is beautiful! You’re…beautiful! And you’re mine! All mine!”

I was gettin’ quite carried away with the moment.

As well I should, I hard earned it, lived for it, fought for it, dreamed of it, for forty years.

Then again, so had Kili.

 “So are you!  More beautiful than I ever imagined!  And I am yours, Brimi, my love. Yours and yours alone.” Kili told me.

I pulled Kili down into me hair for another kiss.

He was a marvelous kisser, that was one thing about him, Kili could just kiss your breath away.

It almost made me forget his inexperience, but as she recalled this was his first time, Brimi reached me hand between them and guided him along.

Kili froze, for just a moment, and then, he slowly and gently pressed his  massive cock into me.

I gasped as loudly as Kili did.

His eyelids fluttered closed, and he moaned.

He looked manly, and handsome and held me hard against his chest.

Mahal’s braided beard, I never saw a man look so happy, in all me life!

“Oh, Brimi! By the gods, Brimi!” he cried out.

Well, I tried to feel the absolute fulfillment and bliss that Kili was feeling, but what I  was feeling was impatience, and I wriggled against Kili’s trying to be such a gentleman, and take it easy on me.

After forty years, do you think easy is what I wanted?

“I want all of you, Kili!” I gasped.

“But Brimi, I’m so big, and…”

“You’re the virgin, Kili, not me! You’re not going to hurt me. Kili, Kili, my fine laddie, I want, no, no I _need_ all of your big, beautiful cock.”

“Brimi…”

Damn the man, I thought, as he drove it home so very slowly the first time.

Still, me toes curled up, and the hair on me toes curled up, too.

The second he was more sure of himself.

“Like that?”

“No! More!” I moaned.

Now this is the part where if you get too impatient, you can ruin a lad’s confidence, forever. 

But I was so damned frustrated!

I squirmed around, trying to arch me hips up, a little, and Kili he put one hand under me arse and braced his other hand on the headboard.

“No. Put your hand on the wall, laddie. You’re a strong man, you’ll break the headboard.”

I wriggled around a little more, trying to get into what I thought would be just the right way to get Kili into just the right spot and…

…and he found the sureness I had given him the chance to muster, and  really let me have it.

Stars?

I saw a whole feckin’ galaxy.

Absolute fulfillment and bliss.

“Ooo, that’s the spot, Kili! That’s the way, by all the fire in Mahal’s forge! God damn, I don’t know why you’re not a blacksmith, because that’s the way to bring your hammer down!” Iyelled.

By this time I had me legs and me arms around Kili, and we both started to sweat.

“Brimi! Oh, Brimi!” Kili moaned.

I started to think that he was about to get to the finish without me.

“Don’t, Kili, by the gods, be a good lad, and wait for me!  If you love me, Kili, as you love me, as you’re the man I know you are? By the gods, not yet! Not yet!” I encouraged him.

I didn’t know how I didn’t kill him, it being his first time and all, and with me far less in control of myself than I unusually am with an untried laddie, because it was Kili  and there I was  pushing back against him harder and faster than he was giving it to me, in a feckin fit, a feckin’ fugue of lust.

“Brimi!” he bellowed.

“Not yet…not yet…”

Then I was just  hooting and yelling and swearing as I violently came me lot until I thought that she was going to pass out.

As we had both forgotten his sheath, Kili remembered enough of what he had learned at his Uncle’s knee to pull out, and he probably thought he did a horrible thing, popping his cork all over me tits, but I am quite like one of the dirty girls in the dirty books, it drove me absolutely wild and I went off again.

We both collapsed in a heap, side by side in the blankets.

“I’m sorry, Brimi! I forgot about my sheath, and it’s in this bag right around me neck!”

“It’s alright, Kili, my laddie. There’s a tea I learned how to make, from an old she- Elf  at the Circus that works as well as a sheath does. But, from now on, we’ll not forget your sheath.”

“I won’t forget. Did I do it right?” Kili asked me.

I giggled.

And I suppose you know I’m not the giggly type.

“You’re a natural, Kili. But if you want to become an expert, you’re going to need practice. Lots and lots of practice. And I’m going to see to it that you get it. You had better rest up on the three days of the week I’m with your Uncle.”

“You’d better rest up on Sundays. You know the Heirs of Durin all have hot blood. And you make mine boil, Brimi. Until it sings your name in my ears.” Kili told me.

“More poetry! I’ve not been had with poetry before, Kili. At least, not good poetry. I like it.”

“I promise, Brimi, I mean to make you love it.”

There was a bathroom with a tub down the hall, and Kili and I snuck down and had a bath, then snuck back to my room.

“I’m not used to sleeping alone, in such a big room. With such thick walls that you canna hear another soul! Will you stay with me, Kili?” I asked.

“Of course. And there’s no shame in it. We are Promised, after all.”

I didn’t laugh, until he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel all warm and fuzzy after this chapter? Why, did you forget how all of this is going to turn to shit in the end? Which comes in the next chapter. But after that ending we all know and hate, there's good news and bad. Good news is the promise of a new beginning. The bad news? Is time utterly immutable? Will Thorin's fate be sealed no matter what foreknowledge he has? Thorin doesn't believe that. But if you want to know the answer, you;ll just have to keep reading the chapters yet to come...
> 
> Oh and a "Grass widow" or "Grass widower" is someone who's husband or wife has been away for a long time, or regularly goes away for a long time.


	4. Thorin's Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Thorin finds out what happens when you get what you wish for, and he has to decide of that's what he really wants, after all.

 

** Chapter Four: Thorin’s Choice **

** Ravenhill. Twenty Years Later.  **

Thorin squeezed Bilbo’s hand.

Pain seized him, and the cold and darkness threatened to overtake him.

“The red-haired woman…the one who came to the Mountain…Did you see her?”

“Yes, Thorin. Brimi. Dwalin’s daughter. Your…mistress?”

“Tell her I love her. Tell her I will await her, in the halls of our fathers. Tell her…Tell her I was wrong, and she was right. I should have kept her at my side. Where…”

“She’s with Fili. I’m not sure she knows…but you’ll be fine, Thorin. All these Elves….King Thranduil…I’m sure you can be healed.”

“Hold out your hope for Fili. He is young, and strong and the son of the Great Wolf. Theres’ none for me, Bilbo. Tell Brimi to marry my sister son, with my blessing. And to live her life as a free woman. A long life, with a hopeful heart.”

Thorin coughed and blood came from his mouth.

“It’s better, Bilbo that you are here with me. Let them remember me as I was. If only I had it to do, again, Bilbo. If only the gods could hear me. Knowing what I now know, I would not be the same as I was, I would not do the same as I have done.”

“Thorin, you did your best. And you have done more than any Man, Elf or Dwarf could have dreamed to do. Please don’t talk like this….”

Bilbo began to weep.

“Listen to me, Bilbo. It was you who did your best. Better than all of us warriors and kings and princes. There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. But, sad or merry, I must leave it now.”

Thorin closed his eyes and passed beyond the pale of cold, and pain, and darkness.

* * *

 

                                                           

** Somewhere in Time. **

Thorin didn’t understand why he was meant to stay on the storm-tossed sea.

Why he could not enter Valhalla.

Surely, he had earned it, if any man had.

“Why, grandfather? And why has Adad not come to see me? And where are my sister sons?”

Thror smiled at him.

“Your father is not dead, Thorin. And your sister sons have not yet died. The battle that you all gave your lives in? It has not yet happened. Neither has your conquest of the Lonely Mountain. You are being given another chance. Soon, you’ll fall asleep, there in the bottom of your rowboat, and when you awake? It will be before your quest.”

“Another chance? After all I have been through, the gods will not give me rest; they seek to punish me and make me live this ordeal all over again?”

“It’s what you asked for, Thorin.” Thror reminded his grandson.

“Who is giving me another chance? As if I need ask? No, as it has been his way, in my life, I see the hand of Loki, himself.”

“That’s I my doing. I married a descendant of Olrun the great, who’s twice great grandfather was the Trickster. He leaves it up to you to choose if you want your second chance.”

“Are there terms?” Thorin asked, tersely.

“There are always terms. You will be able to remember all that has transpired. You may come to think on that as a curse and not a blessing. Remember, though, Thorin, the gods make you no promises. This time, you may fail to take the Mountain. You may die, anyway. It is up to you, if you choose to accept this chance.”

“Will Fili and Kili live, if I do?. I am an old man, and a mean, miserable bastard of an old man, at that. But I would ask that, no matter what my fate is, or the fate of my quest, that this time? If I take this burden upon myself? Will the gods spare my boys? I know now that they are more precious to me than Erebor itself, and every cent of it’s accursed treasure!”

“Your many times great grandfather will be merciful. Your great deeds have moved Mahal who made us, and Odin who made him, even great Thor, himself. They will not let the Trickster make a mockery of your suffering. Or of your chance. The lives of your sister sons lives will not be part of this gamble you make. If you take this second chance, then Fili and Kili will not perish, no matter what happens to you, or to Erebor. If you accept, you have saved them both. But there is a condition. If you act in a way that disparages the gods, or what is scared to Mahal, to all the Khazad, to the Line of Durin and to your own close kin? Then the promise is forfeit, and their lives are just as uncertain as yours. I think you know what they have in mind.”

Thorin rushed to defend himself.

“Would the gods fault me for being a mortal man, with mortal weaknesses? Can I, a man who went from the pinnacle of wealth and privilege to the most grinding poverty, a man who worked and sweated and slaved as a journeyman blacksmith, and a soldier for much of his life be faulted because I was glad to finally be well off?”

Thror had to smile.

Thorin had never admitted he was wrong, not even when he was a child, not now that he stood before his gods asking for favors, and he probably never would.

“No. But you can be faulted for going stark raving loony, even after you saw what the love of gold did to me. No one expects you not to enjoy your wealth, Thorin. Or to forsake it. But you were willing to forsake everything else that should be meaningful to a man, a father and a king, for the sake of hoarded gold. . There is a difference.”

Thorin grunted, grudgingly.

“I know I went too far. But I have seen the error of my ways.. The dragon sickness will not take me a second time. I will not fall victim a second time to greed and the lust for power and revenge, and put them ahead of my duty to my family. Or my Company. Or my people.”

Thorin stopped to think.

On one hand, he could have it to do all over, but with the advantage of his foreknowledge. He could plan for every step and mis-step along the way. True, time was implacable. A  man of almost 200 years knew that. But even so, he was sure that he could affect some changes.

On the other hand, even though he and Kili were both lost, and Fili ‘s fate was uncertain, Erebor had been won and a generation of orcs had been decimated. It had been a herculean feat. What if he couldn’t do it again? Oho, but there was the damnable stubbornness of time. Of fate. Just as time could be his enemy when it came to changing the events, when it came to keeping them the same, surely time was on his side.

And choosing to have it to do all over again would save the lives of his sister sons.

“I don’t know if I can change time, and alter fate, even slightly. I don’t know if any man, even one given a chance like this, by his gods, can do so. But I know I can make changes, that will be in my power. I know that the same forces of time and fate which might take my life, a second time will also lead me and mine to victory over the dragon, and the orcs horde. I am not a god. And I know that I want Fili and Kili to live. I know I want to be kinder to my burglar, right from the start. I know I want to listen to the wizard, indread of doing the excat feckin’ opposte of everything he suggest to me. And i know that no matter what my fate is, I want my woman to be by my side, through all of it. tahts’ what she wanted. She said she had every right to come with us, and i had no right to refuse her. She spoke the truth. So, for Bilbo, and for Fili and Kili, and for Brimi, rather than for myself, I will take father Loki up on his offer.”

“I think that’s a wise choice, Thorin. There is one more thing. When you regain Erebor, for the second time? Will you tell your grandmother that I am often still with her, in spirit? Tell her that I still love her.”

Thror leaned over to hug his grandson, and whispered, clandestinely in his ear.

“Tell Skadi that our son is not dead. When you reach the Elvenking’s wilderness, keep an eye out for your father. He will perish in the wrath of the Enemy if you don’t find him, first. Make sure, Thorin, before you leave the Elvenking’s realm that you know where your father is! Do not say I have told you this, but forewarned is forearmed.”

Thorin nodded.

“And one more thing, Thorin. About this woman of yours, the daughter of your shield-brother. Your own Shieldwoman, as your grandmother was to me, before and after I married her. Can you admit, at last, that she has touched your heart? Stony and black as it is, boy, blacker than midnight in the mines of Moria?”

“I love her, with all of my black heart. I am sure that Brimi would have me no other way.”

“Then make sure that you don’t die again, before telling her so. And make sure take her with you. She may be the key to altering your fate. Now go, and I hope that it will be another hundred years, perhaps two, before I see you again!”

A great drowsiness swam over Thorin, and he sank into the bottom of the boat.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, it's once more into the breach, dear friends, for Thorin Oakenshield. Next time, Thorin will attend an unexpected party on time, but before that, he will try to see to it that he doesn't have to go stag.


	5. Deja Vu All Over Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Thorin tries to put his best foot forward without putting said foot into his mouth, and everyone notices there is something different about him. Also in which we learn about another name Thorin has, which is less noble than Oakenshield, after which we might begin to feel that Brimi is a very good sport.

 

** Chapter  Five: Déjà vu All Over Again **

****

** The Prancing Pony, Bree **

Thorin sat up in a cold sweat.

He was disorientated for a moment, and unsure where he was.

On the ice, dying?

In the rowboat?

On the shores of the Undying Lands?

No, he was in a bed, and not in Erebor.

He thought he might be in the Undying Lands:

Had his wife come, and taken him to become part of her enchantment, forever?

“Anorloth? Are you here? Where are we?”

Thorin peered into the semi-darkness; someone had lit a candle, in another part of the room, and he heard the sound of water sloshing around.

Like somebody was having a bath.

“You’re at the Prancing Pony, Thorin. There’s nobody here but you and me. Brimi.”

The Prancing Pony?

Of course!

The night he returned from the Iron Hills, before the Quest,  he’d met  Fili and Kili and Brimi at the Prancing Pony.

He had gotten angry with Kili, over something stupid and sent him to bed without his dinner., and he’d had an argument with Brimi and made her go back to the Ered Luin, telling her he’d send word when she was to muster her gladiators.

As he’d found out once he’d retaken the Mountain, Brimi had left Bree and gone immediately to the Circus Mortis, where she took over, again, as Master Gladiator, leaving only in time to reach the Lonely Mountain by Durin’s Day.

He had spent one night with her, in Erebor, in the midst of his madness.

Ravishing her, repeatedly, and ranting and raving the rest of the time.

Brimi had not been afraid of him, not had she been dismayed by his 'Madness"

Maybe because Brimi alone knew him well enough to know that going mad was not the longest of voyages for Thorin, especially where money, power and revenge were concerned.

She only laughed, and said that his was a fine madness and he made a fine madman.

The morning of the Battle, he had waded through his sea of treasure, looking for a piece that had been on his mind for a hundred and seventy five years.

A headband, made of mithril, inlaid with sapphires, with a wolf’s head Dwarrow knot on the central medallion, and the runes carved around the edges.

He was going to give it to her, at the feast when he had conquered the Elves and ask her to be his Queen.

Thorin wondered if it was still in his pack.

But, had any of that really happened?

Dazed, Thorin wondered if all of it, his entire quest, the whole six month journey and it’s bizarre ending could have been nothing but a dream.

A sort of mad, prophetic, warning dream.

He sat up and  lit the oil lamp beside the bed.

Thorin had not worn a nightshirt to bed, he had been sleeping his loincloth, so it was obvious to him that it had not been a dream, after all.

Because there was a new scar, just under his ribcage, white and puckered against his skin and the black hair on his chest.

A scar, not an open wound.

He really was live, he really had been given a second chance.

“There is no wound! There is not wound! I am not dead! Praise Mahal! Brimi! I am not dead! You are here, we are back at the Pony, and I am not dead!”

He felt a little woozy, looking the scar and thinking on the enormity of all that had happened, , and laid back down, heavily.

“Brimi! Brimi, where are you, my girl?’ he moaned.

Thorin heard water sloshing onto the floor.

“I’m having a bath, Thorin. And you are having another nightmare. Maybe you ought to have a bath, too. Get out of bed and away from that dream you’ve been having, before you wake the whole floor.”

Thorin lurched out of bed, hauled Brimi out of the wooden tub she was bathing in, and embraced Brimi, ardently.

“Brimi, I thought I had lost you! Left you and your poor father, alone, in this wicked world!”

Brimi squirmed out of Thorin’s’ embrace.

Something she rarely did.

“Don’t touch me, Master Thorin! I have, yet, the right to tell you not to touch me!”

“I’m not your master, Brimi. You are a free woman. I keep telling you that.”

“Bollocks! Twenty feckin’ years you’ve been tellin’ me as to how you’re not my master, but you’re always taking on  like you are! ” Brimi snapped, angrily.

Thorin was used to hearing anger in her voice, but this was an anger born of hurt, not rage.

Her eyes were rimmed red.

Some of Thorin's last thoughts, lying on the ice and feeling the cold overtake him were of Brimi.

With Kili dead, and him dying, and Fili near death, with the faintest of hopes for recovery, what would have happened to her?

Maybe she would have gone back to the Circus.

Forever.

But even so, Thorin was so filled with joy to see her.

But she had been crying.

Brimi didn’t cry.

Ever.

She must have been crying, though, the first time.

And he had not seen it.

What had he been thinking, what had he been doing, the last time he was in this room, on this night that he didn’t notice that Brimi was crying?

The feeling that he had been blind, stupid, seen nothing, and yet the powerful déjà vu was unsettling, to say the least.

Thorin thought he would just have to get used to it.

“It is a load of bollocks, isn’t it, when I tell you I am not your master, and then I do as a master would do with a slave. Tear you away from everyone you love and send you along your way, when it’s convenient for me to do it. Yet I cannot ask you to come with me on this journey, Brimi. Even though I want you to. For one thing, all my men, especially your father, oppose it. For another? I know you will never leave my side. If this journey is my death? I don’t want it to be yours. But I suppose I have to keep proving to you that you are a free woman. Even when it would be better if I acted like I was your master. I will leave it up to you, whether or not you want to come with us, to the Mountain. And I will abide by your choice.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am.”

“Then of course I’m feckin’ comin’ with you! What a feckin’ insult? Me, Brimi, daughter of Dwalin, not good enough for the greatest undertaking any Dwarf has ever made? That was a real load of wargshite, Thorin!  I was Master Gladiator of the Circus Mortis for…”

“Yes, Brimi. I know...”

“I’m not finished! When I was first mate on the Dragon’s Revenge, and still a slave, do you know what they called me? I had my own feckin' harem of prisoners. Men! Elves! Whatever I liked…”

Some of the awe of his mistress that Thorin was in  began to wear off.

He put Brimi down.

“Do I have to listen to this shite again, woman? About all the men you had, and the power you had over them? You wouldn’t like it if all I talked about was every woman I…”

“That is much of what you talk about! This princess and that heiress, and if you think that every  Dwarf in the Ered Luin  doesn’t know how you got most of the capital to rebuild, then let me tell you otherwise!”

“What are you about, then, climbing up on your high horse? I bought you from the Circus, with a ring I got from the lesser of one of those fine highborn she-Elves you were sneering at.  They had to bring you to me in chains, held by two cave trolls for my own well being. That’s’ how keen you were to get at me! It’s a good job I waited until the Ringmaster and his tame cave trolls were gone to unlock you, or you would have had me trousers off while they were still in the room!”

Then again, no matter how much she infuriated him, Thorin always had enjoyed arguing with Brimi

“Maybe you’re right, Thorin Whoremaster! Maybe the only reason I left the Circus is because I was cock-struck! I ought to go back! Where I was Master! Where I had the son of a king for my pet, and do you think you’re the first, the only nobleman, the only warlord, who ponied up the money to spend the night with me? You ought to have seen the ones I turned down! And you know why so many of the Brotherhood were so devoted to me? I was Master, I was Queen! Do you know how many orcs, how many wargs, how many cave trolls, how many wicked men I've killed? Do you?”

“Enough, girl! You've not killed as many as I have, and you’ve not lain with as many men as I have women, and you’ve not lived in greater splendour or deeper poverty, so there’s only so much of your boasting and swaggering I’ll listen to? Which of your Elves and princes and nobles and kings did you leave the Circus for? Me! Didn’t you? Come here, you little monster! Don’t you try and pull your cock out and say it’s bigger than mine! One day, I might not find it so feckin’ enchanting.”

Thorin got hold of Brimi again.

“Didn’t I tell you before to let go of me?”

“You did. But I don’t intend to.”

“But you said you were tired, and for me to leave you alone!”

“Did I say that? Well, I’ve changed me mind. But why are you cold? Is the water that cold?”

Thorin put Brimi down, beside the tub and put his hand in the water.

He swore, grabbed his surcoat and put it around Brimi’s shoulders.

“Your coat will get all wet.”

“It’ll dry by the morning. By the shorter and curlier of Mahal’s beards, I have paid a king’s ransom for these rooms, enough that you should have hot bathwater! Wait. When you are warm enough, dry yourself off and get under the covers. I have to go and check on the lads. And then I’ll go downstairs and see about you having some hot water to bathe in!”

“You’re acting awfully strange, Thorin. You have been since you showed up here, earlier. First you wouldn’t say a word. Then you were yelling at Kili like, and makin’ him go to bed without his dinner, like he was a little boy, and now you wake up from having terrible nightmares goin from waxin’ poetic about who you need me on your quest to complaining you’ve not got your money’s worth cos the bathwater’s cold. What’s got into you?”

“Nothing. I’m just a mean, crazy old man, that’s’ all. Just because I don’t look like a man almost 200, that doesn’t mean I’m not a crazy old man. Come on, back to bed…”

Thorin bundled Brimi over to the bed, and she got a good look at him, in the light from the oil lamp on the table.

 She saw the scar.

“Thorin, wait! Where did this come from? What were you feckin’ doing in Dunland? Making new gates for the mayor’s manor house or fighting duels with those slope-necked yokels?”

Brimi ran her fingers over the new scar.

“That’s a nasty son of an orc of a new scar.”

There was no point in telling Brimi it had been there all along, and she had just failed to notice it; that is not a lie a man can tell his mistress, after all.

“It looks far worse that it was. It’s nothing.”

“Wargshite! Somethin’ awful has happened to you, innit it? That’s’ why you’re takin’ on like this? You almost got yourself killed, didn’t you? Was it one of your women, or one of her kin? A husband? A son?”

“It’s nothing, I told you once, girl! When I was on my way from Dunland, a band of robbers, highwaymen, tried to ply their murderous, larcenous trade with me. The road from Dunland to Breeland is now safer than it was, before I passed through, and that’s for damned sure! I have this scar to remember the highwaymen by. They won’t be committing anything else to memory. Ever.”

“Well isn’t that nice, but it don’t mean shite to me. What I want to know about is that scar. It looks like it came from a deep wound. One that should have been mortal. Any wound dealt to you by a blade of that thickness, right below your ribs? You shouldn’t be breathing, let alone up and around and healed.”

“Well, I’ve only been gone a fortnight and another week. And you can see I’m fine.”

“I know. That’s what bothers me. There’s magic afoot. Don’t tell me there isn’t! I’m a quarter more Dokkalfari than you are, and I know magic when I see it. You tell me what’s going on, Thorin, and you tell me now, and I want the truth! I’m your Shieldwoman, an’ I can’t do my job if I don’t know what’s been going on with you!” Brimi demanded.

Brimi knew what she was talking about when it came to the marks of battle, and Thorin wasn’t sure how to explain it to her, without telling her the truth, or insulting her expertise as a warrior.

“I can’t fool the Master Gladiator, can I? Alright. It was a serious wound. Very serious. I thought I was done for. But the men who found me alongside the road took me to their healer, and she turned out to be a genuine sorceress. She knew who I was, and used magic to heal me. Indeed, it might have been my Morgan le Fay, herself, because I went back to the cottage, to try and pay her, and there was nothing there but a ruin that no one had lived in. For years.”

“Try again.” Brimi snorted.

“Can’t I ever retain a little dignity and majesty in your presence, girl? The woman was a she-Elf, and I had known her, in the past. She did use magic to heal me. And I am a week late because I was detained at her cottage for a week. Recovering. Among other things.”

“Was it her? My Mistress?"

"Brimi, if I am not your Master, then my late wife, whom you have never met, is not your Mistress."

"Late wife! My arse. Do you forget who you'te talking to? How did she get to Dunland. how did she know you were hurt."

Thorin was not accustomed to lying; he wasn't very good at it.

“Elf magic? Dokkalfari magic? How should I know?"

Brimi looked at him, skeptically.

"You're leaving something out. There's something you're not telling me!"

"Such as what color me tunic was at the time? I almost bled to death! Does there feckin’ well have to be somethin’ else, damn you?” Thorin shouted.

Brimi shouted right back, poking her finger in the middle of his chest.

“Don’t try wargshite me, Thorin Oakenshield! I’ve known you and men like you all my life. Orcs too! I saw some of them into our kind of life and quite a few out of it, too. You know when a man of war takes on like you are? When they come back. Where did you go?”

“NOWHERE!” Thorin bellowed.

“WARGSHITE!” Brimi bellowed back.

Thorin picked up one of his boots and threw it at the wall, swearing mightily in his anger.

“To the very shores of Valhalla, that’s where!”

“That's more like it! Who did you see?”

“My grandfather! By Mahal’s beard, I might have stayed! I should have feckin’ well stayed! Why did I come back to this miserable world? Why did I feckin’ well come back to you?” Thorin howled.

“How should I know? You tell me, you miserable old bastard!” Brimi howled back.

That was one of a few things Brimi had in common with Anorloth.

He could never intimidate her.

Under different circumstances, Thorin might have had a real knock-down, drag-out fight with Brimi, and they could both have shouted, thrown things, cursed each other and had a fine time of it; Thorin believed that the best place for a man  and a woman's' troubles was out in the open, and if they came out as loudly as possible, all the better; it meant that there would be no hard feeling, later.

But his heart just wasn't in it, tonight. 

Thorin’s anger left him, like an unquiet ghost, and he sat down on the bed.

“I couldn’t leave you, Brimi, my girl. Or Fili and Kili. Even if Anorloth had come back from the Undying Lands, or whatever enchantment she has locked herself into? I couldn’t have stayed.”

Brimi sat next to him.

"That's it? Don't you even want to fight a little more? I don't mind."

"I haven't the heart for it, tonight, Brimi, my girl."

“Thai's no good! Especially for a man who's got a second chance at life. You’re not going to go mad, now, are you Thorin? Some men do, if they come that close to the other side, and come back."

She looked worried.

“No, I'm too old to go mad. I’m just going to try not to be such a mean, miserable feckin’ arse’ole .Don’t let it bother you. I was feverish for days. It was probably just a fever dream. A stupid old man’s stupid silly fever dream. And this is just another scar. Before you were ever born, I survived quite a few wounds that should have killed me. This is just the latest one.  Now, you stay here in this bed, warm yourself up, and I’ll get me tunic and breeches on, and we’ll soon have a proper bath. And then it’s off to bed. It’s been too long, Brimi, my girl, Far too long.”

Thorin gave Brimi a kiss that he hoped would take her mind off the mystery of the scar and all that went with it.

Then, he got partially dressed and went to see about the bath.

                                                            ***

Kili wasn’t asleep, because he was hungry, to begin with, and then the sound of his Uncle and Brimi arguing violently startled him out of bed.

They screamed and swore at each other and he heard things thumping the walls and the floor, like one or both of them were throwing things.

Again.

Then Kili heard the door slam, hard enough to make him jump, and heard his Uncle stomping by in the hallway, swearing, mightily.

Something about the bathwater, and having been woefully overcharged.

He pounded on the door, and Kili answered it.

“Kili? Did I wake you?”

“No, Uncle. I wasn’t asleep.”

“What’s the matter, lad? You look frightened.”

“All the screaming And the pounding.”

Thorin came in the door, and shut it behind him.

He had his tunic and breeches on, but he was barefoot.

Kili was in his nightshirt.

“It was nothing. Nothing to worry about. I had a nightmare and I woke up in a piss poor mood. Kili,I…well..Why aren’t you asleep, lad? Did we wake you, with all that ruck?”

“I couldn’t sleep. I’m hungry.”

“Didn’t you have any dinner? No, you didn’t. I was angry with you over some damn stupid thing or the other, and sent you to bed without your supper, like you were a child, not a young lad nearly a man.  Why didn’t you go get something, later?”

“You told me to go to me room and stay there.”

“Well, don’t listen to wargshite like that! You’re practically a man, i can’t treat you like a little boy! I do, though, sometimes, Don’t I? Well, I’ll have the innkeeper bring you something, when he sends up some hot water! Where’s your brother?”

Kili shrugged.

“Did he leave for the Shire, early? Has he gone to go see that Tookish lass, what’s her name? Moneypenny Took? No, her mother’s the Took…Brandybuck! Marigold Brandybuck!”

“That’s her name.”

“And you’ll catch up to him, in the Shire and pretend the two of you have travelled together. That brother of yours! He’s got a woman stashed every place he goes, and the places he’s not been he’ll find one, soon enough. Chip off the old block, I suppose. Well, don’t let on that I know. Thought I don’t know why he thinks I should be upset he wants to visit one of his most beloved mistresses before he goes off on a long and dangerous journey.”

“Fili knows you don’t think much of Hobbits.”

“I never said that. Then again I might have said something like it. What I meant was, I’ve done quite a bit of business with the Shirefolk, some of it before you were born, Kili, my lad. I don’t think much of them in the wide world, outside the Shire. They’re innocents abroad in the wide world. They shouldn’t leave their borders. But I do think quite highly of Tooks.”

Kili laughed, a little.

“I think very highly of their woman, especially, just like Fili, is that what you’re thinking? Is that what you’re laughing about.” Thorin demanded.

He laughed a little, too.

But he noticed that Kili’s laugh hadn’t much mirth in it.

“What’s the matter, laddie?”

“Nothing, Uncle. I’m just hungry. And I’m already starring to miss Brimi.”

‘You don’t have to worry about that. I’ve let her decide if she wants to come to the mountain with us. And, of course she does.”

Kili didn’t look much cheerier.

“Now I have to worry about if Brimi will survive.”

Thorin walked over to Kili , put his hand on the back of the lad’s neck and touched foreheads with his nephew.

He wanted to hug him like he had when Kili was a little boy, he was so gald to see him alive, but he couldn't.

“I wouldn’t worry, Kili. Brimi survived staged combat, every night save Wednesdays and Sundays, and twice on Saturdays, for forty years. She will survive this Quest. You’re a good lad, Kili. And you’re turning out to be a fine man. You’ve always been a good lad. You’ve never given your mother and I a day of trouble. Not like your brother. You don’t drink too much, you don’t gamble at all. You’ve never run off from home, you don’t make trouble with women. you work hard, you save your money. You’re the son every Dwarrow father prays for. Just like my brother was. Nothing like me!"

Thorin laughed, and that encouraged Kili to laugh, too.

“Fili always says you accuse him of taking after Uncle Wolf, because you’ve lost your mirror and your memory.”

“He’s right. Loki himself is having a good laugh on your mother and how your brother gives us the sort of trouble we gave your grandfather. Especially me. Mahal knows that I made my father’s life hell from the time I was 17 until the last day he saw me! And if my father would have spoken to me like I did to you, tonightt, sent me to bed without my dinner, when I was your age? I would have made a hell of a feckin’ scene. I know you were trying to show me the proper respect, but don’t let me push your around like that, Kili! Don’t let me be too cruel and officious to you and your brother. Remember to call me Uncle. It will remind me, even as we are on our way, that I am not just your King.”

“I don’t know, Uncle Thorin. I was going to make something of it. But I don’t want to argue with you in public. I didn’t want to make us both look like fools. Or to embarrass you.”   

“You really are a good man, Kili. Like your father. I’ll make sure you get something to eat. Even if I have to fix it, meself.”

                                                            ***

Thorin  returned from downstairs with no jars of water, but with a key, two cakes of soap and an armload of towels.

“Did you go and pay the extra ten brass ha’pennies for a key to the bath at the end of the hall? Hot running water and all? What kind of horrible death did you dream of, a miserable old skinflint like you, to make you cough up a princely sum like that?’ Brimi asked him.

“We’ve got a long slog ahead of us, my girl. I just thought to meself, well, I might as well enjoy the little comforts of civilization, while I can. Besides, Butterbur only charged me five ha’pennies. On account of the bathwater bring cold. Put my nightshirt on, and let’s go have a bath.”

“Did you get Kili some dinner, too.”

“Yes. I was being a right bastard, earlier tonight, and only for my own worries. I ought not to have took it out on Kili. Or on you. But I’m worried about the boy. I think you and Fili are well up for this trip. I still don’t think that Kili is.”

“I’ll look after him., Thorin. I won’t let anything bad come to him. Or Fili. You know that. I used to manage 80 souls, under the threat of death, daily. And twice on Saturdays. I think I can keep two fine, well-trained lads this side of the dirt on one trip across Arda. Was Fili there?”

“No.”

Thorin unlocked the door to the bathroom.

“You mean you’ve hired the tub with the running water? Hot and cold? That must have been a hell of a shock you had, in the getting of that scar.”

Thorin locked the door, hung up the towels, and turned on the water.

“Not only that, I bought a bar of clove soap, and sandalwood bath oil. It was a shock, Brimi, my girl. Quite a shock. I might have died there, alone, as I bled out my life on the cold ground. And for what? Money? A brush with death makes even a mean old bastard of proud, stubborn old warlord like me think.”

“Well, if I thought it would have made you less of a bastard, if any of your women did, one of us would have stuck you through the ribs a long time ago!’ Brimi joked.

She got in the tub, as Thorin poured in the sandalwood oil.

“I imagine Fili’s in Buckland, by now. You know, Thorin, as soon as it’s been a fortnight he’s been without a woman’s company? He’s going to come sniffing around me. What do you want me to do? After all, I am his Chieftain, and he is of the Brotherhood. It seems only natural.”

Thorin was easing himself into the hot bath, but he stood up, splashing water all over, when she said that.

“Natural? Natural! Have you been carrying on with Fili, behind my back, and Kili’s, for the past 20 years?” Thorin demanded.

“Whether I have or not, things will be different, now. I lived with Fili, in one room the size of your bathroom at home, for six months. I’ve known a lot of men, Thorin, and I never knew a man who needed a woman, as much, or as often, as Fili.”

“We’ll, he’s going to have to keep a stiff upper lip! Now, if he starts chasing after you, don’t you feel like you’ve got to go along with him, just because he’s my sister son and Kili’s brother. You are to tell me, at once, and I’ll slap that boy upside his blond head so hard that his eyes will be crossed for a week! Now I remember why I wanted to send you back to the Ered Luin, other than for your own safety!”

Thorin settled into the tub.

“To think I paid those prices for this rickety, rusty, tiny little tub! There’s not room for both of us in it, without us bending our legs up and I’m five feet and four and you’re five foot!”

“I don’t mind bending me legs up. And you are five foot two.”

“Three! Put that feckin soap up on the side of the tub, don’t let it melt!’

Brimi laughed.

“Do you really feel that way about it, Thorin? About me and Fili?”

“Brimi, I am not your Master. You are not my paid concubine, whose favors I can dole out to what men in my household I wish, as if I would allow them to sit in a chair at my table, or eat from a plate in my cupboard! I have made you my Personal Guard because I trust your wit and your mastery of your trade, and I have made you my mistress because I care for you. Deeply. I ask you ask you not to lie with my bonny young nephew, even if you wish to, not as your Master, but as a man. An old man, who has no right to ask a young woman to reserve her favors for himself instead of any young man. But, thought I do not have the right? I claim it, anyway.”

“You know, Thorin, you have your moments when you are, indeed, a tired old man. But not many. Besides, I’m sure my father would break some of Fili’s bones for even thinking of it. But it’s his welfare I’m thinking of. You know Fili. I don’t think it’s a matter of just wanting a woman’s company for him.”

Thorin was becoming suspicious of just what Brimi was up to on Sundays.

Her day off.

“You forget that Morgana the Black is as fond of our Fili as he is of her. I was once married to a witch, Brimi, and they have their ways to get what they want. To make time and space do their bidding. And my Anorloth was only a Dokkalfari folk witch. Thranduil’s daughter is one of the most powerful sorceresses in Middle Earth, not to mention, she’s almost as great a warrior as you are. I don’t think she will give up seeing him for her week-end, each month.. Morgana will find a way.”

“And what will you do about it?”

Morgana had found a way, eventually, and Thorin had chased her away, and been rude and surly and insulting to her. and had taken steps to make sure that she did not return.

That robbed him of an ally he would have had in Thranduil’s palace.

And it robbed his nephew, a condemned man, of a few hours of solace, one day of the week,  with a young woman who literally moved the Earth and the heavens to be with him.

This time?

“I will look the other way, and pretend I do not see it happening. And I will tell your father and Balin to do the same. We may need an ally, in Thranduil’s kingdom. And if I am taking you with me, I can’t turn around and tell Fili not to see Morgana. That would be a mean, miserable thing to do. Even for a mean, miserable bastard the likes of me.”

“Well said, Master Thorin. But that’ll be small potatoes for Fili.” Brimi wisecracked.

“You know, Brimi, my girl, even if Kili hasn’t, I have always wondered what you do, on Sundays.”

“On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, you’ve got every right a man might have to know where I am and what I’m up to. But otherwise? I’m a free woman, Thoriin. I don’t ask you what you do on Mondays, Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. So it’s me own feckin’ business what I do on those days.” Brimi said.

Thorin was beginning to wish that he had stayed blind and stupid.

He grabbed the soap and began lathering up his long hair.

He felt his chest filling with the hot air of a fresh batch of righteous indignation, and then he thought better of himself.

Thorin was surprised.

He couldn’t think of a time, before his dying moments, that he had ever thought better of himself.

He didn’t like it, but he decided that as long as he was doing so, he might as well think things through.

Thinking things through, now that was something Thorin did all the time.

Brimi might have been his official mistress, well, actually, she wasn’t.

He didn’t have an official mistress.

Well, she might have been first among his women, but he stopped to think, not on how many women he’d had, since he was a lad of 17, but on how many he was currently seeing.

On Mondays, there was Zirini, the proprietor of the tavern in the Ered Luin; he had known her for much of her life, she was a fine figure of a woman, as bawdy, blond and buxom as a tavern keeper should be, and a merry widow.

Besides, he disliked paying full price for drinks.

On Wednesdays he entertained one or another of his she-Elf patronesses, who travelled in secret and by means known only to Elves, coming through Forlond Harbor, from Rivendell or the Greenwood.

These were women he had known for over a century, without whose largesse the New Belegost never would have been built.

Of course, he didn’t need the money as much as he once had; he couldn’t remember the last time had had to ask one of them for anything, but a man gets fond of a woman, of women, after he’s known them for so long, and they of him.

And, on Saturday morning, as Sunday was Brimi’s day off, he always left for Bree, or for the Shire, as he did business in their markets on the weekend.

In Bree, there was Dagni, who was the madam at the high-class whorehouse, and in the Shire, well, he thought, with great embarrassment, her certainly hoped that Oleander Took, the half-Dokkalfari and half-Tookish daughter of Bullroarer Took, born on the wrong side of the great man’s blanket, was no relative of Bilbo’s.

Wait.

Come to think of it, he had courted Belldonna Took, Bilbo’s mother, and she had turned her nose up at him and married Bungo Baggnis, because she knew Thorin would never think of marrying her.

That aside,  those were just the women he saw, regularly.

That was not counting the women he knew in various towns along his route when he travelled, with his wagon that was outfitted with a mobile forge, in the curse of his business.

Trips he did not always take Brimi on.

Or Kili.

Usually it was just him and his apprentice, Fili.

Mostly because, he now had to admit to himself, he had other business to attend to.

Fili had the same kind of business.

Why on the occasional Sunday, well, occasional if once or twice a month was occasional, he found himself under enchantment, visiting with his wife, Anorloth, in the Undying Lands if she had gone there, as she said she would, or in some enchanted cottage in Mirkwood or Fangorn Forest, if she had not.

Thorin had thought those were dreams, at first, after she had first left him, but them he began to wonder why his erotic dreams about his lost wife would usually involve not just the erotic part, but also those spirited arguments he was always so fond of, and occasionally involve yard work and mending walls fences and holes in her roof.

And dreams certainly would not have left her long red hairs stuck to his chest, or the scent of her sandalwood soap and jasmine oil on his clothes.

Among less romantic evidences that he had not been merely dreaming of Anorloth.

_So, Thorin Whoremaster, you old son of an orc! You leave your mistress to her own devices three days a week, and when you travel, you might sometimes leave her for a month or two at a time, and during all this time you’ve no lack of abundant female company?_

Whereas it was true that after his wife went to the Undying Lands, before Brimi, Thorin never let a woman sleep in his bed, and never spent more than one night in a row with any of them, not for over a hundred years. And he always took Brimi with him when he was acting as escort to a caravan, or going to do his business at a big festival, and things of the like. Hell, even if his devotion to her was unusual for him, he wasn’t exactly the model of fidelity.

Weighed against all that, if she did enjoy a bit of Fili’s company, here and there, a habit she had come into while she was still in the Circus, and in the course of looking after his life and well-being, what had he to really say about it?

Thorin also suspected that Brimi sometimes arranged to meet with the he-Elf who had been her pet at the Circus Mortis, but that was only three men, besides himself, and that wasn’t evey week.

One of whom she was Promised to, and Thorin often slept with three other women besides Brimi, in a week, as a matter of course.

More, if he was on the road, and it was a very good week.

No, he couldn’t say shite to her about what he suspected she might be doing when they both knew what he was up to, that is, if he wasn’t to be a windbag, a tyrant and a hypocrite.

Thorin took the ladle and rinsed his hair, twice, until it was no longer soapy, and  let the hot air out of his chest and his belly in  a long breath.

“You’re right, Brimi, my girl. It’s none of my affair. Freyja herself knows, I have enough of those, on me own. But, if you are doing what I think you might be, on the occasional Week-end? Don’t let Kili find out. If there is anything to find out. He wouldn’t take it well.” Thorin said.

Brimi looked surprised.

“That’s an unusually equitable opinion from you, considering the subject. And if there was anything to find out, I would have always made sure Kili didn’t find it. There’s some things about my life, all of it, that I could never tell Kili.”

“You wouldn’t consider marrying both of them, twenty of thirty years on, would you, my girl?”

“Now you’re talking business! Are you talking business, Thorin?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I know I’m going to marry Kili. I might as well marry Fili, too., after all, that’s usually how it’s done. I just might. If the terms you offered Da and I were satisfactory. And in writing. A contract, drawn up by Uncle Balin.”

“One that would preserve my rights, exclusive of theirs, to your time?  Among other provisions.”

“Of course.”

Thorin leaned back, into the hot water.

He had no intention of marrying Brimi to Fili, not while he was living, at least. 

He just wanted to see what she would say when he suggested it.

The fact that she took is as a proposal of business caused Thorin to smile, secretly, into his beard.

He spoke again, airily, pouring hot, soapy water over his chest with the ladle.

Idly, as if he had not a care in the world.

“Who knows, Brimi my girl? My wife has gone to the Undying Lands. Perhaps, for legal purposes, for purposes of my remarriage, as King Under the Mountain? As I said, who know? I could always marry Fili off to Morgana the Black. It would make a firm alliance between me and that traitorous, miserable feckin' ponce brother by law of mine!"

Thorin handed Brimi the ladle

“That’s an even better idea. I could sabotage his sheath. Fili's, I mean.  Put pinholes in it. When the time was right. And old Thranduil, he’s always wanted to have a royal grandchild. At this point, with Legolas unlikely to marry anybody, and Morgana doing all the fucking her brother isn’t, he’d be glad to see her married to a tinker’s apprentice, let alone a prince. Dwarf or no.”

Brimi poured some water over her head, and then pushed her hair out of her face, sputtering.

“Who knows? Who knows, my arse! You’d never marry me in a feckin’ month of Sundays. During a Blue Moon.”          

“I might.”

“Bollocks!”

Thorin’s smile escaped from his beard.

Clearly, he was on fertile ground for a proposal.

“Yours, or mine? You’re pouring more water onto the floor than onto your head, girl! Sit cross-legged, and scoot a little closer to me, and I’ll wash your hair.”

“I can wash my own hair.” Brimi told him.

Even as she folded her legs, campfire-style, and squeezed her body as far between Thorin’s legs as she could get in the rather narrow tub.

“And? If I could bend over far enough to suck me own cock, I still wouldn’t do it.  Put your head down, close your eyes, cover your ears, and give me the soap.”

Brimi muttered something under her breath that Thorin couldn’t hear, but she did as he asked.

They were just getting out of the tub when he heard a heavy knock.

“You didn’t let the water out, yet, did you, Thorin? Have you got any soap left? On second thoughts, let some out, and put some more hot water in. As long as you’ve paid for it, I’m going to have a bath, and Kili after me.”

It was Dwalin.

Thorin waited until Brimi was wrapped up in towels, wrapped her in another towel, and opened the door.

“Butterbur charges by the hour, not by how much water you use. I’ve got half an hour left.”

He handed Dwalin the soap, and half a bottle on sandalwood oil.

“I’ll save this for Kili. He’s got more hair than I do.” Dwalin decided.

Kili was wrapped in a towel, standing behind Dwalin, and he had his clothes in his arms.

“What are those for, lad?” Thorin asked.

“To wash them. I lent Fili the money I had to have me clothes washed, so I’ll just wash them after I wash meself.”

Thorin reached into the bag around his neck where he kept his sheath and pulled out a silver penny.

“Send your clothes to be washed, tonight. Let the girl keep some of the change, but save three ha’pennies for yourself, to make up for what you lent Fili. I’ll put it on his tab. He’s already bound to work for me for six months without pay, for what he owes me. What’s a few pennies more.”

Kili looked flabbergasted.

“Did you die a little, Uncle Thorin, and see Mahal on the shores of Valhalla? Was the wound that serious?”

Kili wasn't asking that in a serious way, but Thorin was truthful, for a moment.

“I saw the shores of Valhalla, Kili, and met your great-grandfather, there. He told me I ought not to be such a miserable old bastard, in so many words. So I’m making an effort.” He said.

Kili laughed; he thought his Uncle was joking.

“I never thought you were, Uncle. Not to me.”

Dwalin wasn’t laughing.

“You go on, Kili, you go first.” Dwalin allowed.

He and Thorin both turned to Brimi.

“I know. I’m going back to the room.”

Dwalin waited until Brimi had closed the door.

“Is that true, Thorin?”

“Aye. I have never come so close to death. I have much to tell you, my brother, before we begin our Quest. But not tonight. It’s late. And I’m sure every word we say is being overheard. Ears to the door. And Brimi’s with a glass.”

“Probably. Well, when we are at the Hobbit’s home, we’ll have plenty of time to talk.” Dwalin told him.

Thorin was about to tell him about Brimi coming with them, but he thought better of it

He resolved that, using the story of the highwaymen, he would tell his shield-brother as much of the truth as he could.

Later.

Just then, Thorin feigned extreme drowsiness, for Dwalin’s benefit, and went back to his and Brimi’s  room.

Even though he wasn't tired at all.

Thorin slammed the door, with a flourish.

Brimi was waiting for him, in bed.

"Well?" she asked.

"Well, now that you're all clean, Little Wold One, it's time for me to dirty you up." Thorin chuckled.

He locked the door behind him, and put a chair under the knob.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it certainly seems that Thorin is determined to get off on the right foot on his Quest. But, how well will his story about the highwaymen and the coincidental she-Elf stand up to the scrutiny of those who know him best? Will he break down and tell someone the truth? If he does, who will it be? And when he decides to be more honest with Bilbo about who he is, and his connections to the Shire, will that make things better or worse at the unexpected party?


	6. The Unexpected Party, Expected.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Thorin gets a second chance to make a first impression, Brimi makes quite a first impression on Bilbo, Thorin and Kili have an important talk about the facts of life, and Gandalf begins to think something fishy is going on.

 

** Bag End, Hobbiton, the Shire **

            The first change Thorin made in his arrival at Bag End was that he was on time, or close to it.

            He stopped in Tuckborough, and asked Oleander Took for directions.

            “What does a miserly old warlord the likes of you want with a respectable Hobbit like Bilbo Baggins? ” she asked him, suspiciously.

            “None of your business, witch.” Thorin replied.

            Oleander narrowed her eyes at him.

            “Bilbo is close kin to me. You damn well bet it’s my business, Thorin Whoremaster.”

            Thorin had met Oleander Took when she was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Tookish vixen, when he was a lad of 59, and recently widowed.

            They both had a little grey in their hair, but both having Dokkalfari blood, neither had aged much, to look at.

But it had been a damned long time, and Thorin had no wish to get on Oleander’s bad side.

“I mean you no offence, Oleander.  You are a witch.” Thorin explained.

“I meant you no offence, Thorin. You are a whoremaster. I pity this poor child, the daughter of your own shield-brother, promised to your own sister son, who you bought out of slavery, not to give her freedom, but to make her your bodyguard and concubine. Tell me you're not a whoremaster, to have done something like that!'

Brimi chortled.

“Be quiet, girl, when your elders are speaking. All right, Oleander.  I’m to meet Gandalf the Grey, at Bag End, in Hobbiton. I don’t know what the wizard has planned. But I don’t want to be late.”

"You know, your nephew was in Brandy Hall, this morning. Gordy Brandybuck caught him in bed with his daughter. At ten in the morning. What have you to say for that?”

            “Is the Master of Buckland as good with a broom handle as your father was? If he is, I imagine Fili’s back will be black and blue for days.”

            Oleander laughed.

            “I had no idea the boy was so brazen. I will have to visit Master Goradoc when I am in these parts, again. and try to make amends with him. And his daughter. Do you think the young lass want to marry Fili?”

            Thorin seemed hopeful.

            “Her mother is a Took. She has more sense than that.”

            “Mahal’s beard, I will have to find some woman to marry the boy!”

            “I’ll try to talk the family into it. While you’re away. Alright, Thorin. I’ll tell you how to get to Bag End. But you must promise me two things. First, you had better not get killed. At my age, no matter how good I look, I’m not going to find another gentleman friend here in the Shire. If I wanted one, I’d have to go clear across the Misty Mountains, all the way to Rivendell, and get an Elf. And none of them even look like men. Which is to say nothing of how beastly hard it is to get them to act like men-”

            Brimi interrupted.

“Don’t I know it! I wish the he-Elves were more like their women. All a she-Elf has to do is see a Dwarrow and it’s knickers down, and knees up! Most of the men are as dazzling as the winter sun, but just as cold. And most of the ones who are good for it expect you to go to bed with them, and their two boyfriends and probably some other girl, too, and all at once. Then if you do find one who’s up for it and doesn’t need to get fucked by an army to get his pecker up, you practically have to rape the son of an orc to get him interested, and then he gets all swoony and moony over you, and you have to write him fifty letters a year or he’ll show up right outside your window, always when you’ve got your old man in bed with you, and start crying and reciting bad poetry. He-Elves! You can keep ‘em.”

“Are you finished?” Thorin asked Brimi.

“Will you stop shutting the girl up? She’s being quite a lady, putting up with it. Besides, she’s entirely right about he-Elves. Why do you think the both of us put up with the likes of you? Now, you must also promise me that you’ll keep Bilbo safe, whatever the wizard has in mind for him.  Promise me, Thorin.” Oleander insisted.

“I will guard Mr. Baggins life with my own. After all he’s a half a Took.” Thorin promised.

“Well, Bilbo is in need of an adventure. It’ll bring out his Tookishness. I’lll give you directions to Bag End. There’s a shortcut.”

* * *

 

            With Oleander’s directions, Thorin and Brimi arrived at Bag End just as the Company were sitting down to eat.

            The second change in Thorin’s plans was that he has stopped at the Green Dragon and collected payment owed him by Filbert Gamgee in the amount a keg of Gondorian Ale and a half-barrel of Longbottom Leaf.

            Both of which he presented to his host, after Gandalf’s magisterial introduction.

            Thorin was glad to see Bilbo; so glad that he was tempted to hug his dear friend, before he recalled that they were not yet dear friends.

            “I am sorry, Mr. Baggins, that my men have descended upon your home like a barbarian horde. I suggest you share the ale with your guests, but keep the pipeweed for yourself.”

            Bilbo was thankful.

            Thorin looked around his friend’s home, glad of this second opportunity to visit it, thinking on the visits he would make, in the future, after his great matter was settled.

            And as he looked around, he saw a familiar object.

            The glory box, or hope chest, which he had painstakingly fashioned, out of wood and silver and mithril, for Belladonna Took, on the occasion of her wedding to Bungo Baggins.

            Oleander hadn’t paid him a cent for it, she said that he owed the family, but her son, Gerontius had paid Thorin behind his back.

            The Old Took.

            That was Bilbo’s grandfather, and Belladonna, whom Thorin had once been thoroughly infatuated with, was his mother.

            Belladonna Took who had told him that just because her grandmother and every third woman in Arda thought he was really something, that didn’t mean she was going to jump into line behind them all.

            It suddenly occurred to Thorin that not only had the little wide-eyed fellow clinging to her skirts in the market grown up to be Bilbo, but Thorin had  gone to his death without Bilbo ever knowing that Thorin Oakenshield and Thorin the Master Blacksmith were the same man.

But they were, of course, and who else was Thorin, if not the Master Blacksmith?

If he was asked what his trade was he wouldn’t say that he was King Under the Mountain, or Lord of New Belegost. No, Thorin would say he was a Master Blacksmith, and say it proudly, as a man who had worked hard to rise to the highest point of skill and prominence in his profession.

If he did not seem to Bilbo to be the same man who had appeared regularly in the market in Hobbiton for most of the burglar’s life, then who the hell had he become, during his Quest?

Who, indeed?

“Thank you very much, erm, sir.” Bilbo stammered.

“Sir? Why Bilbo Baggins, don’t you know me?  I remember you when you were a little Shireling hanging on your mother’s skirts, while I was shamefully trying to flirt with her, in the market. Don’t let these fine clothes and my fine lineage fool you. I am still Thorin the Master Blacksmith, after all.”

            Gandalf was surprised at Thorin’s words, but he didn’t let on.

            “Did you have trouble, finding the place? You’re a little late.” Gandalf broke in.

            “I would have been later if I didn’t stop in to see Oleander, in Tuckborough. She gave me exact direction to her great-grandson’s fine Hobbit hole in Hobbiton, and she told me that it was high time he had an adventure. Provided I brought him home in one piece. Great Odin’s ravens, despite what I see in my mirror every morning, I am an old man! My Oleander, is Mr. Baggins great-grandmother. You know, Mr. Baggins, when I was a young man, when I first came to these parts, I helped Bullroarer Took to rid these lands of orcs. He was some forty years older than me, but by the gods, Gandalf, am I that old? Old enough that if I was a respectable man, I might have been our host’s great-grandfather?”

            Gandalf was surprised.

            He seemed a bit taken aback, but he recovered quickly, smiling, knowingly.

            “If you are that old, Thorin Oakenshield, how ancient am I?” he laughed.

            Thorin noticed some mud and dirt on Belladonna’s box.

            How had he not noticed that, before?

            “Who wiped their shoes on the glory box I made for Miss Belladonna? The metal-work is all mitril! Solid mithril!”

            “That would be the young fair-haired prince…”

            “Prince? That wolf’s whelp of a sister son of mine? My whoremastering sister son who spends every weekend in that wrectched hive of scum and villainy that is Forlond Harbor, drinking, gambling, and losing, with a woman on either knee? A prince? You have a tooks’ sense of humor, Mr. Baggins. Fili, come here! Now!”

            Fili trotted over to his Uncle.

            “You wolf’s whelp, how can you be m apprentice and not know my work when you see it? If you’ve scuffed the mithril, you’ll not sit down and eat until it shines so I can see my face in it! There’s been a lot of Tookish money responsible for your having clothes on your back and food in your belly! The Tooks have been our allies since I first came to the west and our customers just as long! Clean that mess up! And say you’re sorry. And I’ve heard about your not having the decency to leave your mistress’ father’s halls before the household woke up, this morning! Do you want to lose us some of our best and most loyal customers? Allies of our folk since I was twenty or thirty years younger than you? Well? Speak up, lad?” Thorin snapped.

            “I’m sorry, Uncle Thorin. I’ll be more careful, in the future.”

            “You had better if you want to be my heir. Clean up your mess. And you owe Mr. Baggins an apology.”

            “I’m sorry, Mr. Baggins.” Fili said, cleaning up the traces of mud with his handkerchief.

            “It’s only a little mud, lad, I’m sure it’s fine.” Bilbo stammered, as Fili slunk away.

            “You must excuse my sister sons’ manners. They know better. I hope they start acting like it! Mr Baggins, I was truly sorry to hear that Belladonna passed on. I was in Rohan at the time and I only found out when I returned, or I would have attended her funeral. She was so young, for a Took. I am sorry for you.”

            “It was all very sudden. And unexpected. Thank you for your concern.” Bilbo replied.

Thorin and Bilbo stood, looking at one another awkwardly.

Gandalf broke in, to ease the tension.

            “Thorin, you have not introduced your guardswoman.” He pointed out.

            “That’s because she has wandered off. Brimi! Come back here and let me introduce you to our host. Put the chicken leg down, first!”

            Brimi was quite a sight for the Hobbit to behold, because even her travelling clothes were obviously in the style of the Circus Mortis, a thing that Bilbo had probably only heard or read about, and likely only half believed in.

            But here she was, iron collar and iron cuffs, with the gladiators’ runes and the master’s runes crabbed on them, and all.

            That and Bilbo had most likely never met a she-Dwarf.

            “Mr. Baggins, my I present my Shieldwoman, Brimi, daughter of Dwalin, Master Gladiator Emeritus of the Circus Mortis.”

            Brimi wore no hood, and instead of saying, at your service, she clasped Bilbo’s wrist were his arm brace would have been, if he wore one.

            “My sword is yours, Mr. Baggins.” She said.

            It was the traditional gladiatorial greeting, and Bilbo was terribly impressed.

            “My goodness, Miss Brimi, are you a real gladiatrix? How extraordinary! And you know, the way you hear about lady dwarves, why, they’d have you believe that you were indistinguishable from men. Even your beard is different from the men’s.” Bilbo stammered.

            Thorin looked at Brimi as if to see her through Bilbo’s eyes.

            She was like her father; even her appearance was formidable.

Like Dwalin, Brimi was tall, five foot, very stall for a she-Dwarf, and like Dwalin, she wore part of her hair in a ruff like the top of an old Gondorian helmet.

Which made her look even taller.

But Brimi looked more like her Dokkalfari mother than her father; she had the same black hair with a tint of dark red, like expensive wine. It was very long, very curly and she didn’t wear it heavily braided unless she anticipated trouble.

 Brimi wore her fine, downy beard in three braids.

One hung from her chin, the other from either side of her face and they all hung to her collarbone.

Brimi dressed as the gladiators did, in a long, square necked tunic with a belt at the waist, and she wore a short battle kilt, a loincloth, and a purple and black dragon leather jerkin over the tunic and a separate armored skirt that was as long as the battle kilt.

Her boots were Dwarf-made, but by a craftsman of the village around the Circus Mortis. They were very sturdy, but not as heavy. Made for long marches and the kind of fast footwork a gladiator did to survive.

They were also higher, coming up to Brimi’s bare knees.

She carried a warhammer across her back, and wore a sword and a dagger, and if you looked closely at the mail portions of her jerkin and skirt, you could see that they were made out of the finger and toe bones of orcs, plated with mithril.

Hranmi had likely done the work, but Thorin would rather not think about who picked up the bill, or why.

For all that, Brimi was a well-made woman, with a deep bosom and wide hips, and she had the pale-olive skin and the dusky-hued, full-lipped sultriness of her Dokkalfari mother.

Thorin laughed in the fact of the Hobbit’s discomfort.

“We don’t keep our women under lock and key because the look like men, Mr. Baggins. We keep them locked up because they very much look like women. But Brimi’s mother was Dokkalfari, and everyone knows you can’t tell a Dokkalfari woman what to do.”  He said.

“Not that he doesn’t try. Mr. Baggins. Don’t you believe the stories you hear in these parts about the other races. Most of them are lies. A woman’s beard is less coarse, and less voluminous. And I am a real gladiatrix, Mr. Baggins. In fact, I was Master Gladiatrix, for most of my time at the Circus Mortis..  I hope I will have a lot of time to tell you tales of the Arena, as this lot have heard them all, after listening to them for twenty years.” Brimi said.

Thorin sat down on his haunches, examining Belladonna’s glory box.

“No real harm done.”

He stood up.

“Your gate squeaks, Mr. Baggins. The hinges are corroded. And parts of your fence are quite rusty. That’s the sort of work my sister son does. When we return to these parts, he’ll have to see to it, for you.”

“Then you really are the Master Blacksmith, who comes to Hobbiton twice a month?”

“I said that I am. Did you think I was not?”

“Well, yes and no. Ordinarily, you don’t look so lordly. And I had no idea you were King Under the Mountain.”

“My grandfather was King Under the Mountain, Bilbo. I’m just a journeyman warlord and blacksmith.” Thorin chuckled.

“Well, you certainly look regal, this evening.” Bilbo said

“Yes, and I intend to continue to look regal, all the way from here to the Lonely Mountain. Or at least. I’ll do my damndest., by Mahal’s beard!” Thorin replied.

* * *

 

                                                            ***

            Thorin was glad to not miss dinner, this time.

            Poor Bilbo’s polite panic about his house and his dishes and his larder was terribly funny, and it was good to see all his kin and friends enjoying themselves so heartily.

Thorin had seen and known so much sorrow, of late, he forgot the mood of hope and joy which they had been in, at the start of their great enterprise.

            He ate, drank and was merry, allowing himself to laugh and have a fine time.

            After dinner when Balin took him aside, to tell him that they need not go to Erebor, Thorin had a better answer for him.

            “Balin, I know that we are well off in the Blue Mountains. I am sure that many times, on our long journey, that I will think of my chair, and my hearth, and how I would be better off sitting in it, smoking my pipe. But Smaug is part of a great evil that sleeps in Arda. An ancient evil that might awaken at any time. What of the day when that evil awakens? Smaug should not be the master of Erebor, then. It is our home. And we have a responsibility to save it. And protect it. Not just for the sake of our race, but for all the races. We’ll do our best, Balin. If we don’t succeed, we’ll go home, make another plan, and fight again, another day.”

Balin looked surprised, but he smiled.

“You’re a changed man, laddie. A different man from the one who I saw a month ago, when you left for Dunland.”

“That’s because I have faced my own death., Balin.”

Thorin was glad he had thought up the story of the highwaymen and the she-Elf for Brimi; he was not accustomed to lying, and it was a version of the truth.

“Faced your death, laddie? Trily? Dwalin was telling me about that new scar of yours. But I thought he was exaggerating how seriously you were wounded.”

Thorin unbuckled his belt, pulled back his surcoat and lifted his tunic.

“See for yourself.” he said.

Balin sucked his breath in through his teeth.

The fresh scar was still red and angry, and the more Thorin saw it, the worse it looked, even to him.

“Mahal’s beard, laddie, that’s a nasty scar! It’s a miracle you’re still alive, having a blade that thick stuck right under your ribs!”

“It was a nasty wound. I had to hold my hand over it, because I was afraid my innards would spill out.  It’s not easy trying to fight off four men at once. One of them got a very lucky poke in on me, before I killed him. By rights, I should be dead. It was a mortal wound. It was just lucky that the villagers in Dunhollow took me to a Elvin healer, and that she knew me well enough to want to use all her skill at healing and magic to make sure I recovered.”

“Was it Anorloth, Thorin? I know you wouldn’t want to tell Brimi if it was Anorloth who saved you, but short of your having run into her mother, Morgan le Fay herself in Dunhollow, I don’t see how you could have been saved.”

Thorin bit his lower lip.

He wanted to tell Balin the truth;  he was not a man used to telling lies of this magnitude, and especially not to Balin, his chief counselor.

“There’s something you’re not telling me, laddie. Something you can’t tell me?”

“I can tell you it was magic, Balin. I promise you, that when I can tell you the whole story. I will.”

“Then I will look forward to hearing it, when the time comes. Still, , magic or no, Thorin, fighting four men at once when you don’t have to is not a very smart thing to do! When you’re given the choice, your money or your life, you’re meant to pick your life.”

“You don’t know how right you are! And a squalid death it was. Lonely, and painful and cold, bleeding out my life on the hard ground. And for what? Not honor. Not glory. Though I told myself as much. No, it was money that motivated me, greed and pride. I did see the shores of Valhalla, and Grandfather came to me. I can’t be a different man, the gods only know. But I can be a better man, for who I am.”

“I’m sorry, laddie, that it took a brush with death, to make you see your way more clearly. But I’m glad you’ve had this flash of wisdom before our Quest.”

“So am I.”

Thorin was lowering his tunic when Kili trotted around the corner, and seeing the scar, his eyes grew big as saucers.

He almost tripped over his feet, running to his Uncle’s side.

“Uncle Thorin, you weren’t joking! You really must have looked death in the face, and seen the shores of the Undying Lands!”

Kili touched the scar, and Thorin winced a little, drew away from his sister son, and adjusted his clothes.

He almost stepped on Fili, who had come and stood on the other side of him.

“Does it still hurt? I’d think a wound like that would hurt for months.” Fili said.

“It looks much worse than it was, my lads. Your Uncle was just in a nasty fight with some robbers, some highwayman, and one of them got a lucky poke in at him. Fresh scars always look worse than the wounds really were, all red and angry. By the time we get to the Mountain, you’ll hardly be able to see it.” Balin assured Kili.

            “Well, I hope so. you know, Uncle, it’s not my place to say, but when you get the choice of your money or your life, you’re suppose to pick your life. We don’t need money that badly. We all have a trade, so we can all do a little work, along the way.” Kili added

            “We have enough money for our quest. I’m just an avaricious old skinflint, that’s all.” Thorin assured Kili.

            “Did you kill them all? The robbers., I mean. Because we can make a stop along the way, and finish the job.” Fili added.

            “Certainly I killed them all! Now listen, Fili, my lad, I know I was rough with you, about Belladonna Baggins’ glory box, but I had her distant kinswoman, Marigold Brandybuck, in mind. You shouldn’t insult the girl’s father by lying about in bed with her through half the morning, so that he has to roust you out! What about making an honest woman of her?”

“Mari wouldn’t marry me if I held an arrow to her heart and pulled the bow back. She says she likes things just the way they are. So do I.”

“We’ll see. Maybe Goradoc Brandybuck and I don’t like it so well. If you’ve been so rash as to leave her with a child to remember you by? Then you’ll be marrying the girl, whether you like it, or not! Now, I want to talk to your brother, alone, for a minute. Why don’t you stake a place for you last to sleep?”

            “Are you going to tell him about she-Elves?  Because I know all about that. You see, Kili…”

            “I don’t need your help, Fili, my lad. Kili will see you, later.”

            But Fili was determined to say his piece.

            “They’ll go mad over you, Kili. But if you get all swoony the way you do, and start talking about love, and Brimi hears it? She’ll put you in chains and drag you the rest of the way to the Mountain with an iron collar around your neck. And the she-Elf. She’ll cut the girl’s head off, right in front of you, so you’re still wiping the blood from your face as you watch your she- Elf’s eyes blink in surprise one last time. And Brimi will make you wear your bloody tunic until it falls off your back in rags. Why, you’ll have just your bloody tunic to wear, and your loincloth, she won’t even give you any boots to walk in. And you’ll walk behind her when she says, and run ahead of her when she says, even as your lungs feel full to burning and bursting, and your feet are cut to bloody ribbons.  And don’t think you’ll be rid of the screaming head of your she-Elf. You’ll have to carry it with you, every day. In a sack. Brimi will put it in a jar of alcohol, and the jar will sit by your pallet, in your tent or  by your bed for the next ten years, at least.  So you’ll remember to never do it again. You can give ‘em your cock, Kili, Brimi won’t care about that. But if you give one of them your heart? Brimi will brand her rune over your heart with a hot iron.  She’ll hold that hot branding iron against your chest until your hair burns and your flesh cooks and smokes. That’ll show you who you belong to. You took the Oath of Brotherhood, Kili. I’ve seen what Brimi does to members of the Brotherhood who break their solemn word. And that was in the arena, having nothing to do with matter of the heart.” Fili told Kili.

            Then he took his leave.

            Kili looked suitably petrified.

In spite of their urge to laugh, Thorin and Balin both made grave faces, and nodded their heads, tugging their beards.

“Kili, you brother speaks some truth. There is a great possibility that you might meet some women, on this trip. She-Elves, probably. She-Elves have a way, whether they seek to, or not, of turning a man’s cock to steel and his brains to mush. Especially the sort who seem winsome, and lonely, and in need of a man. Whether it’s true or not, they all excel at convincing you that they need you, and have been waiting many human lifetimes for a man just like you to come along. Sometimes they convince themselves, in the process, even if it is a falsehood.  But, keep in mind that each of them has a father, a brother, a husband or a lover lurking in the background. And the moment he tells them to stop fooling around with that Dwarf? They usually do. Always if the man is their lover or their husband. They chase after us if they’re bored, or they fancy their chances with a lot of men, or if they’re trying to make their lover or their husband jealous enough to remember that he’s a man. Fili never gets his heart broken by any she-Elves, not do I, because we know better. That’s’ not to say that I condemn them for their ways. I don’t. But I understand them.”

“But Uncle Thorin, you don’t understand…”

“No, Kili, you don’t understand. I’ve seen the little game of courtly love you played with the women you met, in the forty years that Brimi was away. Well, you played that game first when you were a damn fool boy, and after when you were a lad in mourning for the girl he loved. Well it’s been twenty years, since, Kili, and you’re a strong young buck, on the thin edge of your prime as a man, and you’ve had 20 years of Brimi’s good company. She’s going to have to leave us, during the most treacherous part of our journey, to go and muster her gladiators, for the battle for Erebor.  You know where we’ll be, then? Close to or in the Woodland Realm, where there are women who have been waiting almost 200 years to see the likes of we Dwarrows return. And when I say that I mean 13 burly, hairy, sweaty, men hungry for a decent meal a warm bed and a woman’s company. Even if Thranduil throws us in the dungeons, they’ll come after us, there, may Mahal bless their souls! The rest of us know the difference between what a man feels for wives and lovers and what he feels for a fine she-Elf who’s good company he enjoys along his way. And so do the she-Elves you’ll meet, for that matter. You don’t, Kili, and you’ll draw a woman just as foolish as you. You see. I do understand.” Thorin told Kili.

“No. You don’t.”

“Listen to me, boy! It doesn’t matter if Brimi meets up with some Elf she held for ransom who wanted to pay her to keep him, or if you go off into some enchanted garden with some she-Elf while Brimi’s gone, or while she’s with me! You have Brimi. And she has you. And she needs you, Kili, my lad.  You two are already Promised. It may seem to you like Brimi doesn’t love you. But she does. Love isn’t all that slosh, Kili. It’s what there is between a man and woman when all that slosh wears thin. Alright?”

Kili gave Thorin a strange look.

“You didn’t think I knew that’s what’s been on your mind, boy?”

“You don’t know. Uncle.”

“Then tell me. And Balin. He’ll be more reasonable than Dwalin would be.”

“Go on, Kili, lad. Say your piece. It will go no further than Thorin and I.”

“You don’t know, either of you, how I have suffered! I know that Brimi gave forty years of her life for me.  I know that she sacrificed herself to those orc slavers to save me, because she was, at twenty, twice the man I am, sixty years on. And I love her. I love her stupidly, and  I say stupidly, because I am a fool to love her, and I am a fool to have ever loved her. You don’t know how I will suffer, how I suffer, now! For Brimi looks on me more like I was a spirited pony, a faithful hound, a treasured pet far more than if I was a man. Which I am. I am a man, damn it! And she’s had twenty years of my good company, to prove it!”

“I know she has, my boy. My room is two doors down from yours. No offence, Balin.” Thorin chuckled.

“None taken.” Balin said, suppressing a chuckle.

Kili went on, unmindful of the joke.

“But what kind of a man am I next to Hrothgar the Black, Scourge of the Nine Seas of Middle Earth? A man so fierce that his head lived long enough after it was severed from his body that he killed the man who had killed him with his teeth! And, for that matter, what kind of man am I next to Alfsjakld the Great, Master Gladiator of the Circus Mortis for one hundred years. A Dwarf that even Elves have respect for. Thor, himself came when Alfskjald died in the arena, to take him to Valhalla!”

“Kili, lad, I  don't think any of that is true.” Thorin chuckled.

“It might as well be!” Kili declared.

“It’s not the same, Kili. Hrothgar was Brimi’s master, he bought and paid for her, when she was only thirty. He may have treated her well, but he was still her master and she was his slave. And Alfskjald was the master of her trade, who restored her honor to her and taught her to be a gladiatrix. You and Brimi lay in the same cradle, when you were babies. You grew up together. You are Promised to each other. As you say, she sacrificed herself, for you. Surely you don’t think she could have greater love for these other men, no matter how celebrated, than she does for you?” Balin pointed out.

“I’ll tell you what kind of man you are to Brimi, Kili. She sacrificed herself, because she loved you. Doomed herself to a fate many women would consider worse than death, for your sake. She was like an Empress over 80 souls, all but ten of them strong men, at the Circus. Warlords and princes and kings threw themselves at her feet, and offered her a more money than you can think on, for one night! She had the son of a king for her pet he-Elf. And she came back to you, Kili. That’s’ what kind of man you are to Brimi.”

“No, Thorin, she came back to you. I was an idea, in her mind, a hope in her heart, but you were the man she came back for! The great Thorin Oakenshield, son of Thrain, son of Thror, grandson of Skadi Thunderhammer, King Under the Mountain. Who bought her out of bondage with one of the rings from his finger.  All those years she kept the ring you gave her when she was 16, and she still wears it, on a necklace she never takes off.  You don’t understand, Uncle Thorin. You are Brimi’s Master. You always have been and you always will be.  You delivered her from bondage, you returned her to her people, you gave her a position in your household, at your side. In her eyes, you might as well be Odin, himself. She loves you and reveres you and worships you and holds you in awe at the same time as you infuriate her and she rails and rebels against you. You are the light and the dark to Brimi. Good and bad. God and demon. Wicked Master and Kind Master. You are the sun in the centre of her universe that her life revolves around. I love Brimi, but I know I am last, dead last, long last, and every day, it pains me more, and more. Can I be blamed for wanting a woman who will put me first?” Kili finished.

Thorin leaned in close to Kili

“You are the one who doesn’t understand, Kili. Don’t you know what Brimi means, when she tells you that you are her first and last laddie, the one she has vowed will not die in her arms? Don’t you understand what the Oath of Brotherhood you took on each other, when you were Promised, means to a Gladiatrix, let alone their Master? If you don’t understand, then I can’t help you, Kili, lad. Only Brimi can. You ought to tell her what you have told Balin and I. She’ll be furious, and you’ll have words, angry words. But I think the two of you must have it out.  Meanwhile, Kili, lad, keep what I have told you in mind. Especially about she-Elves. And take your brother’s words to heart. Brimi is a true Dokkalfari Warrior Chieftain. A savage woman, who pays those that cross her in blood. She’ll not harm you, well, not seriously. But I wouldn’t be surprised if she did kill the woman you betrayed her with. Whatever you give a woman you may meet along our way, don’t give her your heart. For that would break Brimi’s heart. And if you broke her heart?”

Thorin shook his head, and Balin and Thorin both looked grave again.

“I wouldn’t want to face the wrath of a warrior despot who learnt her craft in becoming tougher, harder and less merciful than an orc, honed it as Hrothgar the Black’s good right hand on a pirate’s ship and saw it come to fruition when she blossomed into something beautiful and terrible in a place like Mordor. Everything dies in Mordor, where the shadows lie. Not Brimi. She prospered. What say you, Balin?”

“Well, I love my niece, as if I were a second father to her, and I know she is a fine, brave, good woman. Capable of much kindness and generosity. But I fear, nay, laddie, I know she has a dark heart. Darker than you think. Our Brimi has had great brutality visited upon her, in her life. And great savagery. I am sure she has had to be capable of both. If you were to break her heart, break your vows and betray her, all on one fell swoop?  I am sure there would be blood. And suffering. Yours.” Balin added.

Quite gravely.

Kili looked quite grave, himself as he went to find his brother.

Balin and Thorin had that laugh which they had been suppressing.

“Do you think we laid it on a little thick, Balin?” Thorin asked.

“We might have. But it’s better for the boy to be wary than for him to be reckless, and for Brimi to create a diplomatic disaster. I don’t think she’d really kill anyone, but there would be trouble. And Brimi’s poor heart would indeed be broken. Still, Thorin, you know Brimi would never hold… something like, well, ships that pass in the night against Kili. I don’t think it would bother her, if he had some little…affair. After all, she understands that she’s the only woman he’s ever…been involved with. She’s a woman of the world.”

“I know that. But Kili’s not a man of the world. He’ll meet some she-Elf, who’s as much of a romantic fool as he is, one who’s in love with love, and then he’ll make trouble for all of us. Especially himself.”

“I see your point, there, Thorin. Is that one of the reasons you decided to let Brimi come along?”

“One of them.”

“I think it was a good choice, Thorin. I know my niece. She’s worth an entire regiment of Dain’s soldiers. And I think her company will be good for you, too.”

“I love her, Balin.”

“Finally admitting it, are you?”

“I will have to find some way to tell her.”

“Just tell her. Our Brimi’s not the picky type. I do think she’d put Kili in chains, though.”

“To keep him away from a certain she-Elf of Mirkwood? I’d forge the chains, myself, and help Brimi put them on him.”

“When do you intend to tell the rest of our Company that Brimi is coming with us?” Balin asked.

“I wasn’t planning on making an announcement. They will see that I have not sent her home. That will have to do.”

“It won’t, Thorin. Dwalin is not going to like it.”

“I know. I’ll sleep on the matter, Balin, and I suppose I will have to take it up, in the morning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wait a minute. Did Thorin forget to tell Dwalin, and everybody else that Brimi wasn't going back to the Ered Luin? Why yes, he did. Hmm. That might cause some dissension in the ranks. Will Bilbo stand up for his new friend? Will Kili stand up for his Promised? Will any Dwarrow, other than Dwalin, who dares challenge Brimi remain standing up, at all?


	7. Going On an Adventure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bilbo gets to witness Dwarrow diplomacy in action, Thorin makes his case with great kingly majesty, Brimi makes hers in putting the boot in, and Dwalin has his say.

 

 **Chapter Seven: Going On An Adventure**.

            The next morning, Bilbo ran to catch up to the Dwarves, but he found they were just on the border of Buckland.

They had stopped there to settle a heated dispute.

            Thorin shushed the two he was talking to, Dwalin and Nori, Bilbo thought, if he had the names right.

            “Let’s not argue in front of our burglar, and air all our dirty laundry for Mr., Baggins to see. Brimi, see to it our Hobbit gets a pony.”

            Thorin’s guardswoman was mounted on a large snow-white ram, with great hooves and horns; the animal was fully the size of the ponies.

            She looked capable, savage and formidable, like the illustration of a Dwarrow or Dokkalfari warrior woman out of a book on the wars of the First Age.

            “But Thorin…”

            “Do what I tell you, girl! See to it he gets a pallet, too, and help him tie up his pack.”

            Brimi dismounted from her ram to help Bilbo, but they could both hear the conversation.

            “Now I have had enough of you lot challenging me, and I will not stand for having you question my word in front of the Hobbit! Don’t you think I would have liked to return from the Iron Hills with ten, or even five more men? The only who volunteered were my brothers-by-law. And you know Vargbrand. He would not take orders from any man, let alone me. I would have taken his brother, Lothinwaen, but Lothin never travels without Wolf, or Wolf without Lothin. That said, Brimi is worth ten warriors from the Iron Hills. We are in no position to send along the Dwarrow warrior who has killed so many orcs her armor is made from their fingerbones, just because she is a woman.” Thorin continued.

            “I still say that we should send Brimi back to the Ered Luin. This is no Quest for a woman.” Dori was saying.

            “Brimi is a very important woman. Certain to be Kili’s wife, and the mother of his children. Maybe the mother of a son or daughter to you. Thorin.       Ad she is Dwalin’s only child and his only daughter. Her life is too precious to wager.” Oin agreed.

            “I know that my Brimi is worth twenty men of our race, not ten, and warriors all of them. But I fear for her, Thorin. I lost her for forty years. I could not bear to lose her, again.” Dwalin told Thorin.

            “Besides we all know why you want Brimi along! Well, I left my wife at home! So did Gloin. And Bombur and Bofur, they left their wife at home, too! It’s not going to be any picnic, without our wives, or our sweethearts, for any of us, Thorin! But my brother’s right. This is no place for a Dwarrow woman.” Nori broke in.

            “But Brimi is not just a Dwarrow woman. Her mother is Idunni, daughter of Dagni, Chieftain of the Dokkalfari of the Greenwood. And the Dokklafari trace their line through their mothers, is that not so? And it is those mothers and daughters and grandmothers who, chiefly, sit on their councils and make their laws. Among the Dokkalfari, a man is a man who is as strong as his father and as great as his mother. And a man and to his wife and a father to his daughter, only those men may try to tell a Dokkalfari woman what to do. Still, they seldom listen. What right have I to tell Brimi what to do? I am not her husband. Or her father. I left it to her, if she wanted to come on this Quest. I stand by her choice.” Thorin protested.

            “That’s very clever.” Bilbo said to Brimi.

            “He’s got a sliver tongue, of solid mithril, old Thorin. Meanwhile, he tells me what to do all the time. I don’t listen all the time, but that doesn’t stop him from trying.” Brimi told Bilbo.

            “Well, I think it’s ridiculous. I mean, I can understand your father being concerned about you, but I think that what that Nori fellow said? It was insulting.”

            He had trouble getting up on the pony and he was surprised that Brimi could lift him up and put him on the pony’s back, with little effort.

            She mounted up on her war ram.

            “That it was. And I’ll not let the son of an orc get away with it!:”

            Bilbo followed her back to the Company.

            “Isn’t it about time I had my say, in this conversation?” Brimi bristled.

“Now just wait a second.” Nori tried to say.

“Shut your pie hole, thief, or I’ll come down off this ram and shut it for you!  Now, Dori, I respect your opinion, as one of the Ered Luin’s elders, and I’m glad of your concern. Likewise to you Oin. But I agree with Thorin. What we needed was another ten men., but all you’ve got is me, and I’m worth twenty. I know you don’t like to see a woman, and a young woman, especially, put in harm’s way, but compared to the harm’s way I was in for forty years? I might as well be going to Forlond Harbor for a weekend jolly-up. That said, I know I am not invulnerable, or immortal. I hope I can count on you both, to protect and defend me.”

“Certainly, young lady.” Dori agreed.

“You may count on us all. Then again, I suppose it’s to my advantage, to have a woman versed in Dokkalfari healing, just in case.” Oin added.

“I have brought my mother’s book, and I have dried medicines in my pack. As for you, thief?”

Brimi got down from Thurisaz’s back,  yanked Nori down from his pony, grabbed hold of his surcoat and lifted him into the air by his collar.

“She’s a very robust lass, our Brimi.” Balin said to Dwalin, who nodded.

Proudly.

“Now Brimi, you know I was only thinking about your welfare. Thorin, could you…”

“Oh no, Nori. You talked yourself into this mess. I’m not going to take your beating for you.” Thorin said.

“Dwalin, you might…”

“I might knock the shite out of you, for saying what you did about my little girl. But I’ll leave Brimi to it.” Dwalin rejoined.

Brimi shook Nori.

“Nori, you can go fuck yourself, you thieving son of an orc! I’m not some common whore on this Quest to be passed around amongst the Heirs of Durin like a party favor, because they get the readies in the beam more than even most men do! There’s plenty of willing barmaids in taverns, and whorehouses between here and the Lonely Mountain, for that! I’m Thorin’s guardswoman, like Skadi, daughter of Bani was to King Thror, that’s why I’m going! And I’m worth thirty of the likes of you!”

She put him down, and assumed a fighting stance, fists up.

“Now, by the curlier of Mahal’s beards, and you tell me to my face I’m your Chieftain’s whore, and I’ll knock you into next week!”

“If you lay one finger on her, Nori…” Dwalin began.

            “Now let’s don’t be hasty! Calm down, Brimi, lass. I didn’t mean that.” Nori told her.

            “Calm down? Do you know the price on your head in Dunhollow? In Bree? Your head is worth more to us severed from your shoulders than it is sitting on them!”

            “Brimi! We are not selling Nori for the price on his head!” Thorin interrupted.

            “Well, what do you mean, then , making it sound like I’m some pampered, powdered, sitting on a pink pillow concubine? That’s how it sounded, to me! Gudrun is expecting a little Bombur, soon, and I’m sure Bragi’s glad to see the back of you for six months, if I was married to you, I would be! And Bronwen isn’t a warrior, and what have you to say about Gloin’s wife, or anyone else’s?” Brimi rejoined.

            “Well, I was sonly thinking of your welfare, Brimi. You don’t have to get personal about it.” Nori replied.

            He was laughing a little, himself.

            “Now you think it’s funny, do you?” Brimi snapped.

            “You sound like my Bragi. She’s always threatening to cut off me head, and  cash me in on all the money that’s on it. What I meant was, I hoped that wasn’t why Thorin wanted you along. I mean, if that was all, it seems a piss poor reason to put a woman in danger. Then again, I suppose you’re not like most women. Still you can’t put all the blame on me. Your father’s worried about you, too.”

            Dwalin had got down from his pony, and he put his hands on Brimi’s shoulders.

            “I’m not going to cut his head off, Adad.”

            “I never know with you, Brimi.”

            Dwalin turned her around.

            “Da, if you tell me I have to go home, I’ll leave. But I won’t go home. I’ll go to the Circus, and start getting my men prepared. I can’t just go home and sit by the fire and make winter tunics for Kili. You didn’t ask Dis to do that, did you? The only reason she hasn’t come is because Thorin put her in charge. Please, Da. I won’t sleep for one night, not for more than an hour or two, thinking about what’s become of you and Thorin. And even the rest of you lot. And what about Fili and Kili? They are of the Brotherhood, I am their Chieftain. I can’t let them go off on a journey like this, without me. I’m the Master Gladiator, Da. I don’t fear death. I fear the deaths of my Brothers, and of my kin and my friends, because I was not there, to protect them.” Brimi said.

Bilbo sniffed, and wiped his eyes on his sleeve.

Dwalin scowled, but Bilbo saw his eyes were a little wet.

“You know, Brimi, the day you were born, your mother wrapped you in a rough piece of cloth, and took you out into the wood, and left you on a rock, for the gods to decide your fate. According to Dokkalfari custom, I was not allowed to interfere, from sundown until sunup. It was for Odin who made Mahal, and Mahal who made us to decide if you lived or died. But I am not Dokkalfari. I crouched in the brush, all night., my axe at the ready, for if any animal came near you, I would have cleaved it’s head in two. And when the Dokkalfari changed their watch, I came out of the brush, and  I put a nice clean nappy on your little red bum, and  wrapped you in a warm fur blanket, and fed you goat’s milk from a wineskin, then I went back into the brush as the next watch came for the night. The minute the sky was pink, I jumped out of the bushes and I unwrapped you from the blanket, changed your nappy, put a little doeskin dress on you that Dis had made for you, wrapped you back in the blanket, and folded you up inside my cloak. By the time the sun was high in the sky, you were lying next to Kili, in his cradle in the Iron Hills. I was your mother and your father both, you know, although I had some help from Dis. She nursed you. But if I had milk, by Mahal, I would have. You are so precious to me, Little Wild One. It’s my job, and Thorin’s, to protect you. You may look after Fili and Kili. But I will be watching over you. You must promise me that if I allow you to come on this Quest, that you will not be reckless, or headstrong and that if I give you an order, in battle, or Thorin does, you will follow it. I would die of a broken heart if I lost you, again.”

“I promise, Da, I’ll mind you.”

“Well, Mahal only knows what might happen to you, in that Circus, all this time! You would be safer with us.”

“Thank you, Da.”

“You might not be so thankful as time goes on, Brimi, my lassie. And I am worried about you. But I have to admit. I’m proud to have you with us. And glad to have another set of eyes to keep on Fili and Kili.” Dwalin said.

“I’ll mind them both. And they have to mind me. They are of the Brotherhood and I am their Chieftain. Isn’t that right, Fili my brother?”

“Yes, my Chieftain!” Fili said, smartly.

“Why is everyone acting like we need looking after?”” Kili protested.

“I don’t, but you do. And nobody wants you to feel like you’re being singled out.” Fili explained.

“He isn’t. Neither of you have as much experience as nay man on this Quest. Or Brimi. You lads keep your eyes and ears open, your mouths shut and mind your oath. Brimi is your Chieftain, you are bound as men of the Brotherhood of Gladiators, to obey her. See to it you do.”

“Yes, Uncle Thorin.” Kili said, a little sullenly.

“I’ll do whatever she says. You’re my Mistress, Brimi, and I’m willing to serve under you.” Fili replied, smirking.

“Fili!” Thorin corrected him sharply.

Dwalin wet to smack him upside the head, and Fili steered his pony away from him, but he rode closer to Brimi, and she shoved him off his pony.

“Nori, take some of that rope you just stole, and, tie it around Fili’s waist.”

Laughing, Nori did what she said.

“Now let me have the other end. This will do, until I can get my hands on some proper chains. Get up on your pony, Fili, my lad.”

Fili got up on his pony and Brimi tied the other end of the rope to the pommel of her saddle.

“Go on, Fili, ride up ahead of me. But not too far. Now he’ll mind me, Thorin. But we had better get hold of a chain and an iron collar as heavy as mine, pretty soon. Otherwise, there’s no bringing this wolf to heel like a hound.”

“Try your best, Brimi. Don’t grin, Fili, my lad. If you get into any mischief, I will stop in the next village and make a chain and an iron collar, by Thor’s stone bollocks, I will!”

“Make two sets. I’m not sure about leaving Kili to roam about, free range, either.”

“That’s’ a fine idea. We’ll chain them together and make it easier for you.”

Amid a spate of laughter, Bilbo fell in with the Company, and they were on their way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thorin thinks he's doing well, but he's not ready to here what Brimi feels she must tell him, in the watches of the night.


	8. Night Watch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Brimi finally tells Thorin the full story of her years with the orcs in general, and Bolg, son of Azog, in particular. Also in which a blacksmith and a former slave comfort each other with wistful tales of gold beyond measure, beyond sorrow and grief.

 

 

“Are you asleep, Thorin?” Brimi asked.

“I never fall asleep on watch.” Thorin lied.

Everyone fell asleep on watch, sometimes, that’s why Thorin always assigned two men to take the watch.

But he never assigned Brimi to take the watch with anyone but himself and Dwalin.

Brimi was good company, on watch; she never complained, except in a funny way, no matter the conditions, and she was usually cheerful and talkative.

But this night, though a clear night, with the moon nearly full, she had been unusually quiet.

Thorin wondered if she was thinking on some of those things that she would never tell Kili.

Things she had never told anyone.

“Well, I’ve been thinking. About what you said, about us being married. Or marrying me to your heir. Kili’s another matter. He’s not your heir. But either way, I’d be Queen Under the Mountain. I don’t know if I can sit on the throne that Skadi Thunderhammer sat on, and wear the crown of Olrun the Magnificent. Or did she just wear the King’s crown, because she was in charge?”

“Olrun was Queen Under the Mountain, in her own right. She wore the crown of Durin the Deathless. And don’t worry yourself, about all that wargshite you’ve been talking. Do you think I’m fit to wear the crown of Durin the Deathless? Me, a blacksmith, a warlord, a whoremaster? Look at my hands, Brimi.  They aren’t the hands of a Prince. I’ve been a dead common commoner for a hundred and seventy odd years. Very odd years, some of them. Like I told you, at the Circus. For any other King, you might not be the proper consort. For me? Who else would be? Why don’t you just tell me what shames you so deeply, get these terrible things off your chest. After all, what man but me would understand?”

 “I don’t know if you’ll understand, Thorin. But you won’t think ill of me, for any of it. I know that much. You know, I was a slave and then a gladiator for forty years. Twice the time I had been alive, when you came to the Circus. Freedom. What did I know about that shite?  I forgot what it was like, to be free. I thought for sure my father would be ashamed of me. I never forgot my home, but, to survive, a slave learns to give up hoping to return home. You didn’t just buy my freedom. You gave me the courage to take it. You gave me back my home, and my family, you took the time to teach me all I had made myself forget, about what it was to be free. You were the man that I ever lay with, as a woman. And the first free man I ever lay with, as a free woman.”

Thorin was quiet.

He knew more was coming.

He pulled Brimi closer to his chest.

“I need to tell you about Tom. And about Bolg, the son of Azog.”

Thorin willed his muscles not to stiffen, but they did.

“I am not disgusted, Brimi. I am angry. But not at you. And I must steel myself, for the hearing. of this.”

“I don’t have to tell you, Thorin.”

“Yes you do. I am a strong man, Brimi, and I have a broad back. Let me help you bear your burden.”

“You hate orcs as much as I do, if any man does. But I think you know them almost as well as I do. You’d have to, in order to be such a clever foe to them. So you know that not all orcs are stupid. Bolg’s a clever bastard, which means he was full of greater malice than any dumb orc. He wanted me, right from the start. But not as his victim. That’s why he always went out of his way to be decent to me. He brought me water and food when I was starving. He bound up my back when I was whipped. Over the years, he showed me little kindnesses. He taught me the orc’s language. And he’d bring me extra food. Clean blankets. Fresh clothes. He’d bring me water to bathe in. He knew how I hated to be dirty. Sometimes he’d even give me soap, and make sure the bathwater was hot.  Consistently, he showed me kindness, when I had nothing from the rest of them but abuse and misery and torture. Bolg was the first orc to ask me what my name was. When I killed and ate most of my orc jailer, it was Bolg who laughed first and laughed the loudest. He said that I had enough of the blood of the Eldar to be considered one of them. That’s what he wanted. To make me an Orc.”

Thorin shuddered at the very thought.

“No wonder you hate orcs the way you do, Brimi! The orc filth! Was it not enough for him to torture you and defile you? No, he had to try to twist you and pervert you. And make you think you wanted it.”

“That was exactly what Bolg had in mind. He didn’t want to think he forced himself on his woman, or turned her into an orc. He wanted me to choose him. And his race. I don’t know if it was out of malice, or if he had some feeling for me. He seemed to have real feeling for me. Sometimes I had real feeling for him. Once Bolg defended me to Boltzog, brother of Azog, his Chieftain. Boltzhog put an axe through his head, and Bolg had to have a steel plate put through his head, to replace a big chunk of his skull. Years later, when I was with the Circus, I personally captured Bolzhog, I fought a duel with him, during the Saturday night show. I cleaved his head in half with an axe. Put the axe right through the place where he had struck Bolg. I hate all orcs. Like the damned hate hell. But I don’t know if I hate Bolg, altogether. He showed me kindness. He saved my life. I hate myself for that. Not Bolg.”

“You shouldn’t. The heart is an odd master, Brimi. Especially when you are very young. Later, when you get older and your heart hardens, you think back on those who exploited your soft heart, when you were young, and foolish. Always, you want to hate them. But what is yet youthful in your heart never can.”

“I thought you might understand, Thorin. But I hope you’re not talking about an orc.”

“No. Worse. An Elf.”

Brimi laughed a little, and it gave her the courage to go on.

“At any rate, after I proved myself as vicious as any orc, Bolg insisted on giving me not just proper clothes, but mail, armor and a  sword. I sat with the orcs, at their tables, from then on.    I got a little closet of a room, then, with a bed, a pot to piss in and if I stood on the bed, a window to throw it out of. Bolg saw to it that I had the opportunity to take regular baths.  I was allowed to eat with them. Hunt with them. But not for slaves. Bolg argued with his Chieftain, his Uncle, Boltzhog, brother of Azog, that since I had some of the blood of the Eldar that I was just as much a she-Orc, now that I was his woman, as any she-Elf they had taken, and I should be treated as if I was one of their own. Because that’s what I was, Thorin. His woman. Bolg’s concubine. As much as I was any man’s woman. I slept in his bed, and we ate, and drank, and sometimes we laughed together. It wasn’t all bad. Which, of course, makes it all worse.”

Brimi laughed, mirthlessly.

“At least the beast being an orc, he didn’t tell you pretty lies.” Thorin suggested.

“That Bolg didn’t. I owe him much. He wouldn’t let them mutilate me any further, because he didn’t have the taste for twisting a she-Elf into an orc that most orcs have. He didn’t have a taste for she-Elves, either. No, Bolg liked me, and just the way I was, and the reason the orcs didn’t just kill me, outright after I wouldn’t break for a year was that Bolg wanted me for himself.  He fancied me not just because of the way I look, but because I was so damned mean, and hard and tough. And he felt himself entitled to a woman of some quality. You see, Bolg is what they call a High Orc. His head is an ugly wreck, but unlike most orcs, the rest of him isn’t deformed, ugly or mis-shapen. He is, after all, the son and sister son of kings.”

Brimi fell silent, and Thorin found himself forced to think of a male orc as being something like a man.

Did the filthy creature have real feeling for her?

It sounded as though he did.

That did not bode well.

            Bolg still lived, Thorin knew, and he knew they would cross paths with him, soon.

            Was it possible that he was still searching for the woman he considered to be his own?

            Thorin held Brimi tighter.

            He would never let the orc filth have her, and he was glad that she would be at the final battle, he hoped it would come again, even as he had hoped, before, that it could be subverted, because he wanted to give Brimi the opportunity to kill the son of Azog.

As much as Thorin desired to kill Azog, himself.

“Do you think he remembers you?”

“I’m sure he does. Orcs aren’t animals, Thorin. They are evil, and full of hate and malice, and most of them are filth and rabble, but they were once Elves, after all, and they are just as much men and women as you and me. I’m sure he remembers me. But it’s been so long, I can’t say if he would still give a damn for me. Especially considering I’ve become an infamous slaughterer of his kind. When I hunted orcs for the Circus, I went to their encampments. It was the he-orcs we wanted, but sometimes when we came to take them, their women and children were there. naturally, they objected. But not for long.  I’ve killed she orcs, Thorin, and their babes in arms, when they tried to stop me from taking their men away. I have no pity for any of them. They are the scum of the Earth, they are filth, they are the maggots in the Enemy’s ever undead corpse. But they are men, and women and children. I have seen she-Elves give birth to orclings, so I  know when I have slaughtered them that no matter how debased they are, I have not been killing animals.”

Brimi’s words chilled him.

They had once been Elves, the first orcs, and he supposed they were some form of humans, some twisted and debased form, evil and vile, but human yet.

Thorin had never thought of them that way.

And he had never killed a she-Orc, or an orcling.

“Brimi, I once thought that you and  I understood each other, in part, because we had both suffered the same way, at the hands of orc filth. I know now that what the orcs have done to me pales in comparison with what they have done to you.”

“They took more from you, Thorin. But they gave more to me. Which is worse? I wish I knew.. But Bolg never gave up on it, trying to make me one of them, in his Uncle’s eyes. When they went to get she-Elves, Bolg always brought me a he-Elf or two. As tribute. You know what the worst part about it was? At the time, you know, I didn’t even think it was so bad. From the neck down, he looks human. If you put a different head on Bolg, he could pass for a man of the race of men, at least, if not for the color and texture of his skin. By the time he judged me ripe for the picking, after so many  years in their dungeons, I had no hope of being released. No other woman ever was. They died in the dungeons, and ended up on the menu, they became orcs and sat at the table with fork and knife in hand or they were worked to death, and their skin and bones was fuel for the fire under the cooking pot. That was the fate of any woman the orcs kept. And Bolg didn’t beat me, he didn’t want to mutilate me and he wasn’t perverse in his tastes. If you know what I mean.”

Thorin knew what she meant.

He had been prepared to hear that Brimi was raped, violated by her captors, by the son of Azog, but to think she was seduced, that she went willingly to the orc’s bed, because worse horrors awaited her?

Thorin was shocked, and horrified.

“The orc filth expected that you would be lovers, as if he was a man of true humanity, not a vile mockery of humanity?”

“I’m not sure if he quite expected that.  Bolg knew that I had come to think like a slave. And a slave has no power to say no to her master, and she knows it. Besides, I knew a decent master when I had one; I wasn’t keen to trade Bolg for one who might be worse. For an orc who would want to torture and mutilate me, who would take pleasure in my pain. There were wickeder masters in Boltzhog’s halls than Bolg, who would have done crueler things to me, had I refused Bolg. You know it was his idea, to sell me as a woman of pleasure and make a lot of money. He knew that I had a taste for men of the races that were closer to mine than he was, and he thought he was tender-hearted and broad-minded to let me indulge it. In a way, he was. No one laughed with me louder than Bolg, when I came back and told the tale of how those fools perished. He even gave me one tenth of each kind of coin that I stole. But, in the end, Boltzhog, his Uncle and Chieftain had an orc woman, an orc woman born of another she-orc for him to be promised to. Bolg refused his Chieftain, but Boltzhog sent me to the slave market while Bolg was out hunting. You know what the funny thing is, Thorin? The funny thing was, I didn’t want to go. I was terrified.”

Brimi laughed, even more mirthlessly, and shook her head.

“Even after Tom bought me, I planned to escape and find Bolg, But at the auction, I was sick, in my soul, for what the orcs had done to me. I couldn’t even get any men to look me in the eye. They could tell I had become something…unclean. But I caught Tom’s eye, and even though he was a poor man? He bought me. The orcs figured I was finally used up, they didn’t charge him much. And he took me back to his little stone cottage. With rosebushes around the door. The tinker wasn’t a bad man. He wasn’t. He was a good master. Young. Good-looking. Earnest. A very good, kind, gentle man.  He gave me a corner of hi stone cottage, and a little bed of my own. With a curtain in front of it. And I had a chair by the hearth. I had a pair of good boots, three shirts, a walking kilt, a pair of breeches and three sets of underwear. He had to pay a lot of money for those things.”

Brimi smiled, genuinely.

“One morning, I was digging up carrots, in the front garden, and I suddenly realized what Bolg had done to me, and what he had nearly done to me, and I began to hate all orcs. Every one. Sometimes it gives me pleasure, to hate them so much. Sometimes it’s like a millstone in my chest, wrapped around my black little heart. But at that moment, it made me cry, to think of all I had lost. I felt unclean. I can’t think of a better word than that. Encrusted, body and soul, with such filth and slime that I could never be clean, again.  I took the spade and I was about to stab myself in the throat with it, but Tom must have heard me cry out, because he ran out and wrestled the spade away from me. And I cried. Like I hadn’t cried at all, from the day the orcs took me. Tom sat with me, on the ground and he held me, while I cried. He didn’t ask me any questions. He didn’t say anything stupid. When my tears had subsided a little, he helped me into the cottage, and to my bed, and that night, he brought my dinner to my bed, on a tray. And asked me if I wanted to leave. He said he’d write me out a paper, saying I was free, and offered me a little money. Half of all he had. I said I wanted to stay with him. Because I did. If he was still there, Thorin? I’d still be there. I called him Tom, and he called me Brimi. He wasn’t my master, from that day on. He never really had been. And I’m only human, aren’t I? A woman gets lonely. Like you wouldn’t know, Thorin. When you’re the whore of a filthy monster, who doesn’t even allow you the consolation of having been raped.”

“What that orc filth did to you was rape, just the same, Brimi. More brutal, a greater violation than if he had just beaten you into submission and held you down, once or twice. It was a merciless campaign of brainwashing, torture and rape. I have never heard of anything so monstrous. And so cruel! I understand, Brimi. What do I have to say to you, after having survived so much horror about your becoming fond of a handsome young man who saved your life, showed you kindness, and rescued you from suicide and despair? What happened to Tom the Tinker? Why are you not still with him?”

“I tried, Thorin. I know enough of smithing, just from you and Da, and Fili., to do a tinker’s work., I helped him, every day. He was a skinny fellow, and he always had a wheeze on his chest. When Tom was feeling sick, I’d do all the work, and then I’d take care of him. He was better for a long time. He gained a little weight and a little strength, and we thought that thing were going to work out, for us. Tom was a gentle soul. A good man, a truly good man. As good as Baldur, himself. He was dirt poor. Dirt poor and dead shy. I used to make him medicinal teas, and he got better, but then there was winter. Feckin winter!  Each winter, both of them we spent together,  I kept telling him, Tom, we ought to go south, to the tip of Gondor, for the winter. In the southernmost part of Gondor, in Ithelien,  they don’t have winter. But Tom had never been anywhere but where he was,  and he didn’t want to go. He got miserably sick, in the third winter, and lung fever took him. I tried to save him. But I couldn’t. I spent the last of what we had for him to have a coffin, a marker, and a burial plot in the cemetery. And then, what could I do? I ran.”

“Why didn’t you come home?” Thorin asked.

“The Magistrate in Dunland caught me. There was a hearing, and the magistrate decided that even though I was a slave, now that my master was dead, it was reasonable for me to think I was free. So they didn’t execute me. They only shaved off my hair and beard, and hung me in the gibbet for a fortnight.  When I was half-starved and weak from hunger and thirst,  the Magistrate sold me to the Easterling slavers. They sent me along, to the Great Slave Market, on the Beran Sea. One of those damned Easterling sailors, he tried to take a poke at me, and I went berserk and slaughtered every man on the ship. For Tom’s sake. And for Kili’s. For your sake. And for my Da. For his honor. And for me. To prove to myself that even though I was a slave, even though I had been the concubine of an orc, I still had a will, and a mind and a heart of my own. I slaughtered the slaving sons of bitches with their own weapons. I was still in the red rage at the mouth when the ship came to port. The other slaves all escaped while I raised unholy hell. It took a veritable army of men to subdue me, and I was howling like an animal and foaming at the mouth. I’d had enough, Thorin. Enough. I ended up in the feckin gibbet again, and I fully expected to die there. I even hoped to. But Hrothgar, I suppose he heard about my performance, and that’s why he rescued me.”

She laughed.

“You know, for a pirate, Hrothgar didn’t hold with rape. I don’t see where the fun it in is, meself. I  tried it, meself, once, just to see what all the fuss was about. On that Elf I got, when I became Master Gladiatrix. It was me first chance, as I never had any trouble with any of me prisoners, before that. I saved his life, that high-hat son of an orc, and spent six months savings buying him from the orcs, and nursed him back to health. And then he got uppity with me? Telling me about this woman and that promise. And I got on top of him in bed and I told the Elf I didn’t give a damn for any other woman he’d ever known or what he told them, for I owned him, lock stock and barrel and the only woman he had to worry about was me.”

“Were you dressed, at the time, Brimi?”

“No.”

“Was the Elf?”

“Not even his loincloth.”

Thorin chuckled.

He was glad that Brimi’s confessions had moved on from the horror of her time with the orcs to the stuff of ribald jokes.

“And what did he do?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, it wasn’t much of a rape. He got this funny look in his eye, and he rolled me over and I swear, Thorin, before that, I’ll bet it had been my whole lifetime, if not yours, since he’d last had a woman.”

“No, Brimi. It doesn’t sound much of a rape. But you don’t have to make light of it. Of what’s been done to you.”

Thorin couldn’t help but become serious again.

“Yes I do, Thorin. That’s how I reconcile myself to it. All of it. For year, the orcs whipped me, Thorin. Beat me. Starved me. They made me work for them, hunt for them, and kept me with their wargs. Chained up.  But they couldn’t break me. And when they gave up and sold me? Again and again?  I didn’t let it destroy me. They took my ear. They took my toes. But I taught myself to stand again. And walk. And run. I may have been bought, and sold, Thorin. I may have had to make myself forget what it was to be free. But I was always a warrior. Never a slave. That’s why I was made a gladiator. That’s how I became the Master Gladiator. I laugh at my own misfortunes because I will not cry over them.”

“And I am angry and bitter over mine, for the same reason. I wish I had the courage to laugh, Brimi. Next to you, what I have suffered seems a mere pittance.”

He thought about Tom the Tinker, a shy, weak, sickly boy, an illiterate yokel from Dunland, probably knocked about all his life by those yokels, saving up his money to buy a woman in the hopes he might know a little happiness before he died. Then he thought of Brimi, tormented and abused by orcs, systematically raped by the son of the Defiler himself, and the tears she must have wept, in that little bed of hers, that she was being treated like a human being again, and how over those three long winters, they must have learned to cling to each other, Brimi and the Tom the Tinker, against the world.

            So young that they were little more than children, all alone in the world, in their little stone cottage.

            With roses around the door.

            Just like he and Anorloth had been, just after the coming of Smaug.

            Thorin held Brimi close against his chest and swallowed a sob, as tears streamed down his face.

“It’s not a contest, Thorin.”

“You would win, Brimi. Even if we don’t regain my grandfather’s gold, after this quest, we’ll go to Dunland, and buy a proper tombstone for your Tom the Tinker. I am sorry for you, Brimi, that you are so young, and you have suffered so deeply. And lost so much. I wish you had told me of these things, sooner. You have never spoken of them, before.”

‘I have never spoken to anyone else of them, at all. Not even my father. Not even Kili.”

“You should explain all this to Kili. He has the wrong idea about you.”

“Kili couldn’t abide this kind of talk, Thorin. I couldn’t tell Kili. Stories like that? He couldn’t live with them. They’d haunt him. I love Kili, in my way. As much as there is left in my black heart, for his kind of love. My love for Kili was part of what made me fight, and kill and keep on surviving. He’s a born romantic, reckless and brave and beautifully stupid. He wouldn’t have lasted two days in the Arena,  and I love him for it. I can’t tell him things like this.”

“Brimi, you must.”

“I can’t. I won’t. I love him too much.   But not the way I love you, Thorin. If you had not let me come with you, on this quest? It would have destroyed my honor. And broken my heart. Wherever you go, I go. Whatever you do, I have done. Where your path leads, even to Nifleheim, itself,  I follow. And I swear, by my oath as Master Gladiatrix, by the oath of the Brotherhood of Gladiators I will not let you be enslaved to dragon sickness. And as long as there is one breath in my body, one arrow for my bow, one last swing of my axe, one ounce of strength in my sword arm, I will not let you die. Because you are my King. And my Master. But mostly because I Iove you, you mean, moody, magnificent bastard of a black-hearted old warlord. You miserly whoremaster of a common Dwarrow blacksmith, you.”

He thought about how she had suffered, when he left her behind.

Especially when he had left her behind, forever.

“And you think yourself unworthy to be my wife? Brimi, it would be my great honor to be your husband. You’d make a far better Queen Under the Mountain, right now, today, than Fili would a King.”

Thorin tried to think of what might comfort her, and then as a slow smile spread across his face, he knew just the thing.

“It’s true I love glory, and money, and revenge, more than most men. Almost as much as I love a woman’s company. But I love you, and the pleasure of your company, more than glory, money, or revenge. I will not trade you for gold, Brimi. You are worth more than the ocean of it I have coming to me. But when you and I come to the shores of that ocean of gold?”

Brimi, born on the wrong side of the blanket, stolen by orcs, sold as a slave, who lived in a barracks for twenty years and in a room half the size of Thorin's bathroom in the Ered Luin for another ten?

She liked to hear stories about the ocean of gold.

And he liked to tell them.

            They both needed cheering up.

            Brimi snuggled against Thorin, her body relaxing in his arms.

            She turned her face up to his, and smiled.

            She knew all the words.

            “Tell me about what it will be like, Thorin, when you’re King Under the Mountain. About what happens when you win the ocean of gold.”

            “It is like an ocean of gold, Brimi. With great glittering waves capped off with diamonds and rubies as big as your fist. Uncut sapphires the size of me head. Golden waves all shot through with silvery veins of mithril coins and beautiful mithril treasures. Finely made rings and brooches and necklaces, jeweled gold and mithril goblets. Crowns and tiaras, jeweled swords and daggers. The pride and the wealth of three ages of the Khazad.”

            Thorin had himself spellbound, in the telling.

Even though he had seen the sight, the image he spun for Brimi, in the telling of it was far grander.

“And you and I we’ll be sitting pretty.” Brimi added.

Like she always did, at this point in his tale.

“Sitting pretty on a mountain of treasure! We'll never have to do the dirty work, again, my girl, once I am King Under the Mountain. I won’t have to make horseshoes, to mend pots, nor will Fili. And you and Kili won’t have to tan your own hides or make your own pelts. No more traveling across Arda in a leaky, creaky wagon. No more county fairs, and cheap inns, and rooms with the bath at the end of the hall.”

He let Brimi say the last part, this time.

 “We’ll have rings on every finger, mithril hoops for our ears. A different shirt for every day of the week. Two pairs of boots, for every season. Fine boots and arm braces and belts of hand-tooled leather, made from Smaug's own hide. Gold beyond measure. Beyond sorrow and grief. For all of us, and our children, and theirs. To never want for anything. Especially not a people. Or a home.”

Thorin thought of how he had perverted his own words, to use them for his selfishness, and avarice.

He had new words, to add.

“I am your people, Brimi. I am your home. I’m a foolish old man, and I have no right to have you. Least of all to love you. But I take that right.”

“You always take what you want, whether you have a right to it, or not, when it’s within the reach of your hand. Or your fist. That’s what you told me when you had me in your bed, when I was 16. I never forgot that. That’s’ how I’ve lived my life and survived and thrived, even. It’s what I like best about you, Thorin. You mercenary son of an orc.”

“I am that. But I am also a tired old man, with much on his mind. And you don’t seem sleepy, even as dawn is coming.  I’ll bet Kili is wide awake. Go and ask him to come to your tent. I hear Bombur getting the pots and pans together, for breakfast. I’ll sleep here. You go.”

But Brimi wouldn’t go.

Not until Thorin said they would go, to her tent, while everyone else was still asleep, before breakfast.

And Thorin was glad of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoa, that was heavy! And do you think Dwalin might have been watching the watch, and overheard? we won't speak of such things, just now. Instead, next time, we'll meet up with Bert, Bill and Tom, and see what unexpected and untold treasures the Company unearths in a troll horde.


End file.
